Business Law

Our business law practice focuses on the needs of small and closely held businesses. We assist clients in establishing, managing and transferring interests in business entities, including corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies. Many of our business clients maintain ongoing counseling relationships with us after their businesses are established.

We strongly believe in a collaborative approach to business and estate planning, and work closely with our clients’ accountants, financial planners and other professional advisers to ensure that our clients’ immediate and long-term goals are identified and addressed.

Our business and corporate law services include:

Advising clients regarding the selection of business entities most appropriate to their needs and objectives. This counseling is often performed in cooperation with the client’s financial and accounting advisers.

Forming business entities, such as corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies.

Qualifying foreign business entities to do business in California.

Structuring business entities and agreements governing their operation and transfers of interests in them (e.g. shareholder agreements, LLC operating agreements, partnership agreements and buy-sell agreements).

Counseling and representing clients in the purchase or sale of businesses.

Counseling and representing clients in reorganizations, recapitalizations and dispositions of businesses and interests in business entities.

Business succession planning to allow closely held businesses to be passed to family members or other persons actively involved in the business operations.

Coordinating our clients’ estate and business plans.

Ongoing general legal counsel to business owners and coordination of services of their other advisors (e.g labor law or other specialized attorneys, accountants)

Business Succession Planning

Our agriculture, real estate and small business owner clients have typically invested years of effort and substantial resources to create and build their businesses. Their businesses often represent a major portion of their wealth, and are the employers of their family members or valued associates. Many of these clients wish their businesses to be continued after they retire or pass away. Business succession planning is designed to achieve this goal.

Business succession planning can pass a business to family members, loyal employees or other persons. It can also help minimize the disruption caused by a business owner’s death, disability, or divorce or disagreements among co-owners. We work closely with our clients and their other professional advisors to achieve these objectives and to create and implement plans that will minimize the income, gift and estate tax burdens on the family resulting from the transfer of business interests during the client’s lifetime or at the client’s death. These goals can be achieved through a variety of techniques, including both lifetime gifts or sales or plans that will be implemented only at death.