Maryland Business Lawyer
Why Work With a Maryland Business Lawyer?
If you're in business, you have a highly-specialized skill set that drives your success. Odds are, that skill set does not include an advanced legal degree and decades of experience advising entrepreneurs in all aspects of running their businesses. When you work with me, you have the benefit of my deep experience advising companies of all sizes in complex business matters. You can always count on the best possible legal advice, so you can put your full attention to running your business.
Choosing the Right Business Entity
Before you open the doors to do business, you want to make sure you have the right business structure in place. The right business structure can reduce your tax liability, protect your personal assets, and make borrowing money easier. I will take the time to understand your business goals and objectives, and help you determine which corporate structure is best suited to achieve your priorities. Learn more.
Contracts for Business
Contracts must be written to be clear and concise, yet comprehensive enough to address all facets of a business transaction. I can review contracts offered by your vendors to ensure there are no onerous terms or ambiguities. I can also draft contracts for the purchase of services or assets, employment, partnerships, and other transactions that impact your business. I understand how important it is to ensure the language contained in a contract is clear, enforceable, and not likely to result in a dispute. Too. many commercial lawsuits could have been avoided with smart contracting. Learn more.
Business Exit Strategies
Many people start a business without considering their exit strategy, whether it be passing the business to heirs, merger, or sale. Developing an exit strategy is an important consideration in how a business should be structured to maximize future sale value and ensure that your business continues to operate through organizational changes. Let me sit with you to help develop a strategy to ensure your business continues well into the future long after you have retired or are incapable of handling the day-to-day operations. Learn more.
Mergers & Acquisitions
With decades of corporate law experience, I provide high-quality service with efficient, timely results. I have an in-depth understanding of the merger and acquisition process, which allows me to provide effective assistance on transactions ranging from emerging companies all the way up to generational corporations.
I strive to bring creative insight and experienced awareness so you receive professional advice tailored specifically for your situation, regardless of the size of the transaction. Learn more.
Government Contracting
Securing a government contract can mean lucrative profits for small businesses. However, government contract work is tightly regulated and restricted, bound by a myriad of rules and regulations. Additionally, small businesses are often competing against larger companies, many of which have long-established contracts already in place with the federal government. So, where do you start in the world of government contract services? Hiring a government contracts lawyer will save you time and costly mistakes while providing an edge to securing both profitable and potentially long-term government contract work. Thienel Law can help. Learn more.
What Areas Can a Maryland Transactional Lawyer Help Me With?
Corporate & Business Transactions
Corporate and business transactions often require a sophisticated knowledge of commercial law that a transactional lawyer deals with as their stock in trade. Here are a few examples of situations in which you could benefit from working with transaction lawyers:
Intellectual Property Protection
Intellectual property gets stolen frequently. Transactional attorneys can help you protect your intellectual property from being abused, pirated, or hacked.
There are four primary types of intellectual property (IP) protection. A transactional lawyer can help you with any of these types:
Patents. A patent provides property rights on something the patent holder invented. The purpose of a patent is to prevent others from making, selling, or using the invention without compensating the patent holder. To get a patent, your business lawyer would file a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The three types of patents are utility, design, and plant patents.
Trademarks and service marks. Your business might have a symbol, design, word, or phrase it wants to trademark or a service it wants to service mark to protect its competitors from using that item. Trademarks only last for 10 years, but they can be renewed for another 10-year block after each 10-year term.
If your business relies on private business information, devices, processes, or formulas, you might want to have your transactional lawyer protect these trade secrets. For example, the original Coca-Cola formula is a trade secret. You cannot register a trade secret. Instead, your company must restrict access to confidential information, use post-employment restrictive covenants and nondisclosure agreements, and take other appropriate security measures.
Copyrights or another type of intellectual property protection. It is possible to copyright a wide variety of intellectual property with the U.S. Copyright Office. Some of the types of works that can get copyrighted include original books and other literary works, music, choreographic works, paintings, sculptures, graphic works, dramatic works, computer software, and architectural designs. The holder of a copyright owns the exclusive rights to that work, including controlling the distribution, copying, display, and modification of the copyrighted work.
Protecting intellectual property is sophisticated legal work. You do not want to risk your ownership of your intellectual property by trying to handle these tasks on your own without a lawyer.
Contract Drafting
Your transactional attorneys can perform several functions in the area of contract drafting, like drafting contracts for you on new business dealings, updating your existing agreement forms, editing proposed contracts, and other forms. When an experienced attorney performs your contract drafting work, you can be free to spend your time on the business of your company.
Contract Negotiations
If your transaction lawyers negotiate contracts for you, you will get to focus on the areas of your expertise in your business. You want your commercial agreements to be valid and enforceable. Also, your transactional attorney can negotiate contracts like government contracts, personal contracts, and other types of contracts.
Entity Formation
One of the first important decisions you will need to make is what type of entity your business will be. Will it be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a limited liability company, or a corporation? You should discuss the advantages and disadvantages of C corporations, S-corporations, and other forms of corporate structures to select the type best for your business.
Your transactional attorneys can help you clarify your business goals, set up your corporate governance and general governance, and draft contracts for your partnership agreements and other business needs.
Compliance Matters
Depending on your industry, you might have stringent compliance matters you need to address. Transactional lawyers can advise you on the government and legal issues that could relate to your situation. Small businesses are particularly at risk in the area of compliance matters because they usually do not have in-house counsel to perform due diligence and provide legal advice to them.
Regulations evolve constantly in your state, as well as on a federal and global level. It could be a full-time job for you to keep up-to-date on all these changes in legislation and rules and understand how they intersect. Sometimes, one regulation will conflict with another rule. The more global business becomes, the greater the risk is of unintentionally failing on regulatory and compliance issues without legal advice.
Businesses that want to understand their legal responsibilities, navigate conflicting regulations, manage their risk, and minimize the effect of regulatory bodies, can work with transactional lawyers on regulatory and compliance issues. The economic fallout from noncompliance issues can be enormous. Also, when you work with a business lawyer on compliance, you can decrease the amount these rules interfere with your ability to do business.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions are risky times for businesses because there are many moving parts. Multiple contracts and other forms must somehow get synchronized seamlessly. Clients must get handled with care so they do not take their business elsewhere. Employee policies of the two previous organizations should not get violated.
It can be challenging to act in the best interest of more than one organization. Your best defense in these circumstances is to work with transactional attorneys during mergers, acquisitions, and other business dealings. Your legal team can provide a wealth of legal services to help you navigate through a successful merger and avoid litigation.
Exit Strategies
Every business entity should have an exit strategy, even a relatively new business. Your exit strategy might be contained in your partnership agreement, your limited liability corporation agreement, your bylaws, or come other contracts.
If you have an exit strategy in these documents, you will want to review it regularly to ensure it still makes sense in light of recent developments in the economy, your industry, and your business. Your transactional lawyers could discuss your exit strategy strategies with you and draft the necessary agreements to facilitate your strategy.
Some common exit strategies are to sell your business interests to your partners, to the employees, or to a third party. Selecting someone to run the business after you is another option. Sometimes, simply winding down and closing the business makes the most sense.
The Benefits of Hiring a Transactional Lawyer
A transactional lawyer can provide many services, for example:
Handling business transactions
Protecting your intellectual property
Performing legal research on business development issues
Reviewing potential business transactions
Preparing tax documents
Performing legal research when new legislation goes into effect
Drafting contracts to avoid future litigation
Protecting your financial interests
Reviewing your personal contracts
Providing guidance on general governance issues
Performing due diligence
Many other legal services
If you want to be able to devote your energy and attention to what you do best, your business, having transactional attorneys assist your leadership team, negotiate contracts, handle intellectual property disputes, deal with individual clients, and handle other business dealings could help you accomplish that goal.
What Is the Difference Between a Transactional Lawyer and a Litigation Lawyer?
A transactional lawyer handles out-of-court business legal issues like contracts, negotiations of mergers and acquisitions, drafting documents, and other issues not involved in an ongoing or potential legal dispute that involves or could involve litigation.
A litigation lawyer practices trial and/or appellate law when there is a dispute that goes to court. A litigation attorney can file pleadings to initiate lawsuits, draft responsive pleadings, perform pretrial work like formal and informal discovery, argue motions before the judge, and participate in the trial. If the case gets appealed after the trial in civil court, an appellate litigation lawyer can handle the appeal.
Both transaction attorneys and litigation attorneys act in the best interest of your company.
What to Ask a Transactional Lawyer Before You Hire Them
You want an experienced attorney who understands the legal issues of business law, contract law, and transactional law. When interviewing candidates to provide your commercial law and business transaction legal services, you will want to talk with law firms focusing on these fields, rather than someone who practices any type of law case that walks in the door.
You might ask the law firms what percentage of their law practice is business, corporate, or transactional work, and what percentage of their law practice is in other fields, like family law or criminal law.
Talk to a Business Transaction Attorney Today
Whether you've been in business for years, or are just starting out, we can help. Our firm is proud to offer fractional general counsel services to help you start, run, and stay in business at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house counsel. Contact us today to learn more.
What our clients say…
-
“Unbelievably knowledgeable and responsive, particularly where it concerns ... financial planning matters. I truly feel like Steve cares about me and any issues that I bring before him - in other words, I’m much more than a client.”
— Rob Gould
-
“Mr Thienel provided very good guidance for me when doing a fairly complicated will and health care document. He worked quickly and efficiently, was very accurate in his work, and provided extremely helpful guidance. His fees were reasonable and he made himself available when I asked.”
— Lester
-
“Throughout years, Steve has been my go to guy for business, real estate, and legal work. Steve works fast and is highly reliable. I would recommend Steve to anyone.”
—Tom L.
Transactional Law FAQs
Here are a few examples of questions people often ask about transactional attorneys:
What do transaction lawyers do?
Transaction lawyers are business attorneys that deal with business transactions, like the purchase or lease of equipment, materials, and supplies, or the acquisition of entire businesses. We negotiate contracts, draft contracts, handle general governance issues, and provide guidance and other legal services.
We assist clients in dealing with complex issues inherent in the law and the economy. We can deal with individual clients on your behalf. Transactional attorneys can assist with every phase of a business deal.
Lawyers can practice transactional law when working for the government at the federal, state, or local level. Nonprofit and legal services organizations and labor unions also rely on the services of transactional law attorneys. Some private law firms also hire transactional law firms.
What is business transaction law?
Business transaction law deals with any type of financial undertaking a company might pursue. A business attorney can be there from the formation of your company, through the growth and expansion of your business, through mergers and acquisitions, and when you want to move on to something else.
What kind of transaction lawyers are there?
Law firms that practice transaction law can general business law services, or they can have one area of specialty. Some examples of specialized transactional attorneys include mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property, real estate, entertainment, corporate finance, and commercial law.
What does transactional mean in law?
Transactional means having to do with business dealings. Many transactional lawyers describe this area of business law as being less confrontational than litigation or as being more like construction than demolition, with demolition referring to litigation. A transactional business lawyer does not usually have to deal with as many adversarial issues when doing transactional work as they would have to do as a litigator. The aim of transaction law is to provide advanced protection for the client's business.
What does transactional work mean?
Doing transactional work, as opposed to litigation means you write, negotiate, and review the documents that make business transactions possible. Transactional work can be real estate, drafting municipal bonds, attending closings, performing legal research, drafting contracts, handling mergers and acquisitions, negotiating business deals, and attending meetings, but not going to court.
When Do You Need a Transactional Lawyer?
A transactional attorney could advise you on the legal issues created by your business transactions if you are an individual or an organization. If you are a business entity, a transactional attorney could help you:
Select the business structure for your company, draft the formation documents, and create the legal entity.
Draft your agreements and negotiate your contracts
Fill out the forms you are required by law to complete and file, like applications for tax exemptions
Craft your employee policies.
Advise you on and draft the necessary legal documents that pertain to compliance, general governance, and commercial issues.
When dealing with individual clients, transactional attorneys can provide these legal services:
Prepare and file your tax documents and other legal forms you need to be eligible for government benefits.
Perform the negotiation of and drafting of the individual client's personal contracts, like employment agreements, leases, and loan modification forms.
Create wills, powers of attorney, living trusts, and other estate planning documents.
