Litigation:
I always liked the saying “when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” With nearly 20 years of legal experience, I bring a variety of tools to resolving disputes and solving problems for clients and their businesses. Sure, I love getting in the courtroom and arguing a case in front of a jury, it’s practically Disney Land for lawyers. But pushing everything to trial is not always the best business decision, especially for my small business clients on a tight budget. Some representative cases I’ve handled are:
Contract disputes
Employment discrimination
Employment contracts
Construction defects
Consumer protection
Fair debt collection practices
Fair credit reporting
Advertising fraud
Auto Fraud
Merchant Cash Advances
Small-business Transactions:
As I was cutting my lawyer baby teeth practicing litigation, I found myself constantly thinking: “if only they came to me before things fell apart, this would be so much easier and less expensive for them.” As much as I enjoy litigation, working with someone to put the pieces of a small business together, rather than picking them up when things fall apart, is like being there when the baby is born. I like working with any size business to come up with a plan to provide legal services as the business grows. At first, all a business may need is a client-facing service or sales contract to limit liability from customers. Or a business with more than one owner might need an operating agreement, so that when disagreements happen down the line it doesn’t have to be the end of the business; those “small business divorces” as I call them, can get nasty. As a business grows, I’ve helped clients draft employment manuals and policies, negotiate leases on new offices, vendor or subcontractor agreements, and even the purchase and sale of new businesses. Some projects I’ve helped small businesses with include:
LLC formation
Non-profit formation
Lease negotiation
Contract drafting and negotiation
Employment contracts
Employment discrimination
Business Debt Relief Program:
One of the areas I’ve been passionate about working in recently is business debt relief, in particular with businesses who find themselves in onerous merchant cash advance deals. Those are deals in which a party, often not a licensed lender, contracts for a share of future receivables . Often though, the terms of these deals are nominally structured to avoid the Colorado lending law and contain draconian terms that put your business in a death spiral. As the business becomes less able to keep up with the payments, the creditors often use very questionable and harassing collection techniques. I get those creditors to stop their harassing techniques. Depending on the amount, type of debt, and the business’s ability to repay the debt, I can recommend a debt relief strategy that is tailored to the unique circumstances. And if the lender is engaged in predatory or otherwise illegal loan collection practices, I can vigorously pursue the lender and make sure your business is treated fairly under the law.
Representative clients:
Really the best part of my business is getting to meet and work for so many great people and businesses. As I like to say, I’ve represented everyone from a dog walker to the largest banking institutions in the world - too many to list. There are a few clients and industries I find myself representing fairly frequently and I really enjoy doing it:
Construction: I started in construction digging holes and swinging a hammer with my grandfather’s little business, building fences, sheds, decks and doing other small projects. My first career after college was as a lineman for the telephone company. So I have a “ground-up” experience with the construction industry. I love working with clients in the building trades - whether it is negotiating contracts, handling mechanics liens, or complex multi-party construction cases. It just brings me back to my roots.
Food and beverage service: Is there any industry that attracts more hard working dreamers than the food and beverage industry? I love working with my food and beverage clients because I get to play a small part in helping someone’s dream come true. It always feels great to take a little of a burden off of my clients by helping them set up a restaurant or brewery, purchase an existing business, acquire licenses, get through inspections, negotiate a lease, develop an employee manual, or even deal with the occasional restaurant shake-down scam that targets too many of my immigrant clients. And I can’t help but feel a little pride when I visit my clients at their places and see their dream come to life.
Professionals: I get it, I’m a professional too. When you’re a professional it’s more than a job: your profession is who you are, and your reputation is a big part of what you sell. You can’t afford to trust your livelihood and reputation to just any lawyer. Over the last almost 20 years, I’ve provided legal services to architects, florists, engineers, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, insurance brokers, doctors, veterinarians, and even other lawyers. Whether it’s setting up a new business, negotiating contracts, defending licenses, arbitrations or litigation, it’s always an honor when a professional trusts me with defending their business and hard won reputation.
Righteous nonprofits: I think we’ve all dreamed of the day we can stop working to put bread on the table and put our skills to work helping people in need. That’s what my non-profit clients do. I have represented non-profit businesses in all sorts of areas, from a small one person non-profit for stray animals, to a large trade organization with tens of thousands of members. I have also volunteered time to sit on some non-profit boards. It’s always an honor to be hired to be part of someone’s righteous enterprise.
Consumers: Consumer protection is my penance. I spent several years in the wake of the mortgage bust defending large banks and mortgage companies in courts and arbitrations all over the country. It wasn’t a good fit for me; I’m not a white-shoe Wall Street kind of guy. I went to law school to help people like I grew up around, not to help the big guys and bullies get out of trouble. But it was during that time that I realized Colorado has some of the worst and most difficult to navigate consumer protection laws in the country. So after I left that job, I moved over to the other side of the “versus”: I started representing consumers against those big banks and other big businesses and even successfully petitioned the bar association to start a committee to improve consumer protection laws and services in Colorado. Now when a debtor or consumer hires me to help them, I get to bully the bullies and big guys. That’s more my style.
Check out the online intake form to see if your case is one of the kind I have experience handling or contact me at (303)500-1778