Business Transactions and Corporations

Leading Los Angeles Business Attorneys

The business attorneys at Wasserman, Comden, Casselman & Esensten, LLP provide comprehensive corporate, transactional, and business contract guidance and representation across the spectrum of issues confronting modern businesses, both new and established. The firm's business attorneys provide considered, business-oriented solutions to clients' needs in today's rapidly changing marketplace.

Below you will find just a few of the business law services provided by our business attorneys. To read about the firm's work in business litigation, please visit this site's separate Business Litigation page.

• Business Formation

• Business Administration

• Transactions

Business Formation

WCC&E business lawyers regularly assist founders and entrepreneurs with the formation of their companies. Companies can be formed using multiple types of entities and corporate structures, such as a corporation, partnership, or limited liability company. The firm's corporate attorneys listen to the client's needs and expectations for a start-up enterprise. Our lawyers counsel clients through the multiple federal and state corporate and securities laws that will affect the legal entity and ownership structure.

From the beginning, you can protect your personal assets from the disaster of a business failure if you plan ahead. WCC&E's business lawyers can take you through the steps necessary to protect your personal assets from the risks of owning and running a business. It may be as simple as converting your existing sole proprietorship or partnership business into a corporation or limited liability company.

Choosing a business structure is only the beginning of the formation process. Included in the initial start-up process is legal advice concerning business registrations and business compliance matters. Our business lawyers advise multiple founders on the benefits of memorializing in writing the relative rights and obligations among them. We can also assist in the preparation of a capitalization strategy.

All of the firm's efforts in connection with the formation of a new entity are enhanced by the wide range of legal experience of our attorneys. We can assist in the analysis, negotiation, documentation, and due diligence with respect to potential financing sources.

We know the importance of correctly documenting the formation of new legal entities, and will assess the legal aspects of the attendant contributions of capital, ideas, and intellectual property rights to the venture. Certain transfers must be formally registered, and the firm's Intellectual Property attorneys are experienced in making filings with the Patent and Trademark Office, Registrar of Copyrights, and other governmental agencies to properly reflect a new entity's ownership of contributed assets.

Contact us for more information on our firm's wide range of business formation services.

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Business Administration

Our involvement, however, does not end when the business entity is formed. WCC&E business lawyers also service the day-to-day legal needs of numerous businesses, large, mid-sized, and small.

WCC&E business transactional attorneys are accustomed to advising clients regarding the ongoing operations of a business. This representation is varied in scope and complexity, and includes general counseling and assistance drawn from extensive experience in:

• Ongoing corporate transactions, including capital formation, shareholder agreements, contract review, and real estate
• Regulatory business compliance
• Dispute avoidance and resolution
• Management counseling
• Partnering agreements, license agreements, and joint venturing
• Confidentiality agreements
• Manufacturing and supply agreements
• Technology licenses
• Purchase agreements and other important commercial contracts
• Financing (including commercial and private, secured and unsecured)
• Collection of bad debt
• Employment law matters
• Intellectual property (including trademarks, copyrights, patents, unfair competition, and trade secrets issues)
• Protection and licensing

In addition, the firm's business attorneys can draw on other WCC&E lawyers in complimentary areas for additional expertise on areas involving management succession, personal estate planning, intellectual property, employment and labor relations, workers' compensation, alternative dispute resolution, and litigation.

A large percentage of the firm's business clients are privately or closely-held entities, usually small corporations and limited liability companies ("LLCs"), and are a major focus of the firm's practice, with some management and ownership issues distinct from the larger entities the firm also represents. Our business lawyers recognize the importance to the business owner of dealing with attorneys who are both knowledgeable about the client's business and sensitive to providing immediate, effective, and proportional solutions to their legal needs.

At the same time, medium and small sized companies face many complex legal issues similar to those that confront the world's largest corporations. WCC&E's business lawyers offer middle market companies the same experience on which large corporations depend. In both the "for-profit" and "non-profit" areas, the firm has counseled boards of directors, special board committees, and senior executives with regard to management succession, investor relations, conflicts of interest matters, and change-of-control matters, including mergers, proxy contests, and takeover bids.

Please contact us to set up a consultation with one of the firm's business lawyers about your business administration needs.

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Transactions

Perhaps the "core practice" conducted by the WCC&E business attorneys is transactional matters. For business transaction clients, we regularly handle mergers, acquisitions and dispositions of businesses and related assets ("Mergers & Acquisitions" or "M&A"), joint ventures and other methods of combining business operations, as well as "spin-offs" and other methods of restructuring the ownership of business operations.

The largest single component of the firm's non-disputes business, our mergers & acquisitions practice, involves representing and counseling buyers and sellers, and working with financial advisers, merchant bankers, intermediaries, and other parties in transactions ranging from small, privately negotiated transfers of shares or assets to leveraged buyouts and contested takeovers.

We welcome entrepreneurs, start-ups, and established businesspeople seeking information and assistance in these sorts of matters to contact us.

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