Business Law is all the firm does. As an entrepreneur and business leader you focus on using your company to create wealth. Argent Place Law focuses on you and the legal services that help you protect and build upon the wealth your company is creating. Those services are grouped into four categories: General Legal Counsel, Intellectual Property, Business Formation, and Succession Planning.
Proactive General Legal Counsel Services
A good General Counsel manages the headaches of legal issues so you 
can concentrate on building your company. Of course that includes reviewing and drafting contract documents. But a great General Counsel is also proactive. You want your legal counsel to understand your business and provide valuable business counsel, suggesting courses of action and helping you negotiate the terms of agreements. Argent Place Law provides service and expertise in the critical areas of legal business counseling, including
- Regular Strategic Planning sessions with you and possibly with your key people
- Contract templates for customers, and custom contracts when needed
- Teaming agreements for preparing government contract proposals
- Reviewing government contracts, especially to protect intellectual property rights
- Contracts of merger and acquisition
- Contract to sell business units
- Bringing in investors
- Deferred compensation plans
- Buy-Sell agreement among owners
- Financing agreements
- Managing business disagreements, pre-litigation and lawsuits, derivative actions
- Business governance issues: Member meetings, Shareholder meetings, Boards of Directors meetings
- Advising on fiduciary responsibilities, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
Intellectual Property
Unprotected ideas are free for everyone to use. But if you take the proper steps to protect the ideas that form the basis of your competitive advantage, you will be freer to exploit your ideas and build greater wealth. The area of law that protects ideas is called “Intellectual Property,” and it includes the subdivisions of Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, and Trade Secrets. Argent Place Law supports your Intellectual Property in the following ways:
- Applying for patents and trademarks
- Developing a plan to defend your patents and trademarks
- Documenting your trade secrets and devising a plan to protect them
- Crafting specific Non-Disclosure Agreements
- Drafting non-compete agreements
- Negotiating and drafting licensing agreements that monetize your ideas
- Drafting the Terms of Use for your interactive website
- Using copyright to protect designs
Business Formation
It is not hard to draft and file all the documents required to start a new business; that is one of the great things about America. But it is easy to overlook a critical step, and easier still to avoid unpleasant negotiations with partners. While some first-time businesses owners use cheap online services to form their companies, entrepreneurs who delegate that task to an expert achieve peace of mind and the freedom to concentrate their entrepreneurism on what they do best. Argent Place Law supports your Business Formation in the following ways:
- Advising you on the form of governance to use (LLC, corporation, joint venture, etc.) and why
- Drafting and filing Articles of Incorporation for a corporation or Articles of Organization for an LLC
- Obtaining your EIN from the IRS
- Obtaining local permits and licenses
- Providing template company resolutions, and a specific resolution to open a bank account
- Drafting the Operating Agreement or Shareholder Agreement (critical for companies with more than one owner)
- Joint Venture and Partnership agreements
- Drafting corporate bylaws
- Advising and drafting a buy-sell agreement among owners/partners
- Providing for financing of the buy-sell agreement
- Tax-free reorganizations for moving your company from one state to another
Succession Planning
Every entrepreneur who has started more than one company will tell you that you must have an exit plan. For the majority of entrepreneurs,
that exit plan is either to transfer the company to the next generation or to sell the company. Both paths require advance planning in order to build value and protect the wealth built up in your company. Argent Place Law supports your Succession Planning in the following ways:
- Strategic Planning to build the value of your company well before you plan to sell it
- Negotiating and drafting letters of intent and the contract of sale
- Amending the operating agreement or bylaws to permit transfers of interest under well-defined conditions
- Employee Stock Options
- Leveraged buyouts
- Drafting your will and trusts to protect your biggest asset
- Take advantage of close corporation discounts when transferring interests in small family owned business
- Company dissolution and winding up
When you are ready to chat about your specific needs and how Argent Place Law might help, please contact the firm for a free initial consultation.