Business Advice, Transactions, Agreements and Dissolution
Lanin Law P.C is counsel to a wide variety of businesses of all sizes from sole proprietorships and small start-ups, to our long standing corporate client, H.O. Penn Machinery Corp., Inc., which is the largest dealer of Caterpillar Construction Equipment on the East Coast. We have counseled banks, lenders, mortgage, companies, auto finance companies, equipment lessors, and bankruptcy, trustees. We have extensive training in business law and understand the legal issues that face business owners whether they are just starting out or are already established. We handle drafting and negotiating a wide variety of business agreements that the entrepreneur needs, including leases, operating agreements, incorporating documents, contracts, and loan and security agreements. We have extensive experience litigating commercial disputes in state and federal courts where agreements were poorly drafted by others. Ambiguity leads to disagreements which are not easily resolved. We have counseled many clients who had only verbal agreements and found themselves in a dispute with few options. Not every dispute can be avoided but avoiding them starts with a strong, clear, legally binding document.
We also handle business dissolution and the related issues that may concern shareholders, partner and limited liability company members during the process of winding up the company’s business and financial affairs.
If you have an existing small business or are just starting out, consider whether trying to handle your own legal problems makes sense. Treating the legal issues in your business as a do-it-yourself project is like the story of the $6 haircut. For years, a barber provided excellent service and charged $20 for a haircut. A competitor opened up across the street, charging $6. The barber panicked. He worried: I’ll go out of business! But he decided that the only way to win was not to take the bait. The next day, he put a new sign in his front window: “WE FIX $6 HAIRCUTS.” The moral of the story: sure, you can always find someone to help you do cheap legal work, but will it be done properly?
If you represent yourself, ask if you have the training to know what terms should be in a form off the internet. Would you be able to avoid the pitfalls and hidden landmines in any given transaction? Isn’t your business worth the investment to do it right the first time? Our firm spends a fair amount of time counseling clients who come to us with problems that could have been avoided with the right legal help.
We recognize that when it comes to business law one size does not fit all. Everyone has a different situation and needs some specialized guidance and advice on how their particular business deal will affect them, what alternatives to consider, and the pros and cons of each. Some transactions, may involve one-time advice or a relatively simple review of a contract. Other matters may require on-going advice. Commercial lease negotiations, for example, may require extensive time negotiating the terms and creating and exchanging redlined versions of drafts (to show the changes, edits and comments) and then reviewing those terms with our client. We are flexible enough to accommodate our business client’s needs regardless of the kind of business matter you may have.
