Almost all of my small business clients have come to me because some other business breached its contract with my client, defrauded my client, infringed on a trademark or wrongfully foreclosed on their business property. Those actions can be tough for businesses of any size, but they can hit small businesses even harder.
Thankfully, we have been able to step in and help our clients get back on track. We aren’t just able to recover for the immediate losses, we also seek to recover the lost profits. This has allowed the businesses to survive and prosper.
Many of these businesses have become long term clients — not because they keep having problems, but because they have discovered that we can help them in many ways other than litigation. Our experience comes from many years in litigation, all of which involved settlement negotiations, sometimes into the millions of dollars. Those negotiations have given us a significant expertise in business negotiations.
Those skills have been very useful in helping clients negotiate all forms of contracts, including the sale or partial sale of business assets. We have also reviewed our clients’ business contracts and written additional contracts to try to keep them from more litigation.
These contracts have included international trade agreements, which have their own special provisions due to the international nature of the contracts and special requirements of some countries, such as Indonesia, in order to do business there.
Of course, one law firm is not the best for every legal need — not even the mega-firms. One size does not fit all. So when one of our business clients comes up with a problem we don’t handle, we know from all of our experience the best lawyer to hire for that problem. We have done that many times for our business clients.
So why does every business need a lawyer? For all of the items mentioned above which will eventually come into play with your business, if they have not already done so.
Lloyd Gathings, Senior Partner