Practice

Business Law

Did you ever wish you could have an ongoing relationship with a legal advisor, someone who could answer your questions whenever you need them as you operate your business? For aspiring, new AND existing business owners, we can help you with a variety of issues, such as choosing the right entity type for your new enterprise, writing & reviewing contracts or evaluating your current legal needs. This is sometimes described as serving as your “outside general counsel” for your business.

Contracts

Do you have a written, legally-binding contract in place with your customers and clients? With your vendors? With your partners? By planning ahead, you can save yourself the hassle, time and expense of having to deal with “deals gone wrong” – make sure that you have the right contract terms in place, to legally bind the other parties you do business with, whether they are your partners, customers, or vendors. We have over 15 years of experience in drafting and preparing contracts for businesses in various industries and unique situations, and we can adequately address your business’ legal needs by ensuring that we include the most important terms for your business.

General Practice

What’s your legal question or legal issue? If it’s something that we can help you with, we will.

If not, we will gladly provide you with referrals to other specialized attorneys in employment law, intellectual property, real estate, tax and business litigation, to name a few. We are committed to helping you find a solution to your problem, and that always means sending you to the right professional, even if they are at another law firm. We believe in building a congenial network of attorneys and professionals so that we can be the best resource to you and your business.

Closely Held Business (General Counsel)

Are you the owner and operator of your business, serving as Shareholder, Director (or Member/ Manager) and President, CFO or some other officer? Then your business qualifies as a closely-held business, since the number of owners and decision-makers are limited, even though the business itself may be large and thriving. Maybe you are running a business with other family members, with a few different generations working together. Do you have questions about how to hire or fire employees? Do you need to draft a contract with a customer for a special project, or to bring on a new business partner? Do you want to protect the business you have built thus far, by planning ahead and implementing effective legal practices and solid strategies? Our practice is focused on providing practical solutions for your business as various legal needs arise during the daily operations.

Basic Estate Planning

The “basic” part of it means that we will help you with establishing a relatively simple estate plan that will apply to most middle-class families and individuals. However, if you have a complicated estate (in the types of assets you own), complicated family situation, OR net worth that could grow to above $10 million, then you require the assistance of an estate planning expert. Since this is not our area of specialty, we would be happy to provide you with referrals to trusted specialists in complex estate planning to meet your needs.

Wills

Everyone needs a will. Regardless of if you are single with no family, or married with children, unless you want the state of California to dictate where your assets go when you pass away, you will want to have a will in place sooner than later. Writing a will may help you think about not only the people whom you want to benefit financially, but also what kind of legacy you will want to leave behind.

Even if you have a living/ revocable/ family trust, you will still need a will, since every individual needs to address their tangible personal property, their funeral wishes and appoint guardians for minor children in a will.

Trusts

By the time a person is married and has their first child, they should already be thinking about establishing a revocable living trust for the benefit of themselves, their spouse and their children as beneficiaries of their estate.

The rule of thumb to keep in mind with regard to a revocable or “living” trust is that if you live in California and you own more than $150,000 in assets, you definitely need one. In other words, if you own your own home (chances are, it’s worth much more than that, especially in California), you may need a revocable or “living” trust, in order to avoid a probate administration of your estate when you pass away.

Durable Power of Attorney

If you were to get into some kind of car accident that left you mentally incapacitated and unable to manage your own finances, this document would ensure that your desires would be executed. You would have appointed one agent (with two successor agents) to make financial decisions for you, if you were still alive but unable to make these decisions yourself.

Advance Health Care Directives

Remember what happened to Terri Schiavo? This document will ensure that your loved ones and trusted friends can make informed decisions about your health care, if something were to happen to prevent you from making these decisions on your own. In this document, you can write specific instructions about life support treatment, whether you want to donate organs upon death, and appoint at least 2 agents to make health care related decisions on your behalf.

FAQs

I have what I think is a pretty good invention/ product idea. What do I do next?

Congratulations! Before you go in the direction of filing for a patent, have you made a workable model of the product? Maybe you should experiment with various materials to see what works best. Once you have a model in place, then you can look into asking investors from various places, such as family and friends for help to fund this idea and reproduce samples for potential investors to inspect. If it is truly a spectacular idea, I’m sure that the right people will come alongside you and help to move it forward.

You should also spend some time talking to as many successful business owners (especially in similar industries) as you can. This will help to give you perspective in terms of what works in that particular market/ industry, what is viable and can truly succeed as a product (as well as what it took for them to get started). There is a ton of valuable information that you can find on the Internet to answer a lot of your questions.

Furthermore, you will want to invest some money (to hire an attorney) in making sure that you don’t reveal or discuss your product idea to anyone unless and until they sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) so that they are not allowed to “run” with your idea and make money from it.