Little is more important than a company’s funding and formation. This pivotal moment will control many aspects of a company’s identity, including its form, who controls it, who stands to gain when the company does well, and who gets what as part of the company’s exit strategy. Having experience counsel guide principals through this process is imperative.

Formations

There are many different options for forming a company: sole proprietorships, partnerships, corporations or the famous alphabet soup of hybrid options (LLC, LLP, LP, LLLP). Each of these options has varying attributes for control, formalities and tax implications. Life Law Partners can assist you in choosing the best business form for your situation, often in consultation with your tax professionals. Once up and running, Life Law Partners also helps formally organize your business, including necessary organizing meetings and government filings, including tax, labor, corporate and licensing applications.

Corporate Venturing

As businesses expand, they often identify other businesses or organizations that become key, mutual allies in each other’s growth. From informal to formal, the law permits these allies to venture together, capitalizing on their mutual assets to achieve shared growth. Life Law Partners can assist your business as it identifies these key allies, initially assisting with memoranda of understanding between the parties and while eventually progressing toward informal strategic alliances, formalized joint-venture agreements or full-blown mergers.

Securities Offerings

Offering ownership in a company is a highly regulated act. With history laden with examples of swindlers and Ponzi schemers, the law has mountains of regulations in place to protect the investing public from fraud, misrepresentation and unfair influence. Even with these regulations in place, Life Law Partners has experience capitalizing on legal exceptions and exemptions to make the process of raising capital as easy and simple as possible for you. We can assist you in complying with the federal securities laws and the various blue-sky laws (state-level securities regulations) and the necessary placement memoranda and investor qualifications and evaluations necessary to comply with the law.

Owner Relations

Often, our clients are sizable enough where the agreement between a few key stakeholders is sufficient to manage and operate a business. Keeping owner relations stable is key for a business’s growth as it permits the owners and their staff to do what they do best: grow their company. Life Law Partners can assist with many tactics designed to keep peace in Dodge, including shareholder agreements and voting trusts that clearly and objectively lay out the company’s decision-making process.

Exit Strategies

We used to say we assist companies “from cradle to grave,” but that often spooked people into a grim thought of their company dying. In reality, many companies simply progress onto a different phase of life, often times with the departure of the company’s founders. Our goal (and hopefully yours, too) is to have a planned departure that meets your expectations, including cash considerations for the work you put into nurturing your business, potentially along with going-forward equity, consulting arrangements or other ongoing involvement.