Are you searching for a business attorney near me with decades of experience, insight and sound business counsel?  The business attorneys at the Watkins Firm have served the San Diego and greater California business community for more than four decades.  We have extensive experience in most vertical markets and business models.

3 Key Takeaways for What to Look For in a Business Attorney:

• Extensive Experience. Look for business attorneys with extensive work in your vertical market, with businesses like yours.
• Comprehensive Business Legal Services. Your business attorney should be able to help with any business legal issue from business formation to exit strategies, contracts, guidance and skilled defense of employers, to dispute resolution.
• Sound Advice and Counsel.  Your business attorney should have the experience of “been there, done that!”  They know the challenges you will face, the opportunities you will need to leverage and have proven strategies to help at every crucial point in your business.

We are the go-to legal team for industry leading bio tech companies, research, development and engineering firms.  The San Diego healthcare and medical business community rely upon our attorneys to protect their practices and organizations while helping them to remain compliant with complex federal, state and local laws.

Perhaps you are searching for a business attorney near me with experience in all aspects of mergers and acquisitions.  Are you considering the purchase of a competitor’s assets or reviewing the acquisition of another company through a stock purchase?  Our experienced business and corporate attorneys work to ensure a sound process from negotiation through consummation.  It is important to preserve and enhance the “spirit of the deal” while protecting our clients exposure to present and contingent liability.  Due diligence, sound contracts and smooth transition planning ensures the best possible outcome in any asset purchase contract or stock purchase transaction.

The Watkins Firm has developed and maintains an extensive, proprietary library of contracts, checklists, corporate documents and other business forms that have been tested and proven across four decades.  We simply custom tailer an existing, proven contract to meet your unique requirements, saving your company a lot of time and money.

We advise and defend California employers in a state that is, by far, the most challenging state in which to be an employer.  We provide sound HR advice and counsel in a cost-efficient manner, while helping employers to avoid disputes and litigation, wage and hour violations, PAGA lawsuits and other employment defense challenges.

We provide insightful counsel on companies with independent contractors who are struggling with the impact of the recent Supreme Court decision in the Dynamex case.  This game changing decision has changed the base legal presumption in California that all workers are considered by law to be classified as employees.  Our San Diego business attorneys guide clients through the new A-B-C test to answer questions concerning existing worker classification and to reduce present and future exposure to draconian financial penalties for employee misclassification.

Pro-Tip: “After 35 years of doing this and after thousands of different companies, a lawyer tends to know more about how to run a business than most people would expect. We go to college for seven years, but we learned our whole career from other people’s mistakes and other people’s successes. And so the three core things that I’ve come away with is if you’re going to have a business, you should have an experienced business attorney. You should have a banker (source of finances) and you should have a CPA. Most people are kind of clueless about what a CPA does, not for taxes but for advising you on how to be profitable.

When they come in, they tell us the story and we ask them questions about what kind of business this is going to be – we want to know from a lawyer’s perspective. Is this a high risk business? Is this a trending business? Is this a highly regulated business, those kind of things. So we can advise. And then we ask about other things and what they’re doing and just to get a gauge on how sophisticated they are or how unsophisticated they are so we can help.

Most entrepreneurs, especially younger entrepreneurs, don’t really value is the importance of getting the structure of the business right. The business documents. And I’m specifically talking about the operating agreement or the shareholders agreement. Well, they change the law every so many years and then the courts interpret it and they change it. And so we keep up with it every month. but if you just take a bland form from the internet and try to create your own contract and you’re acting like your own lawyer, and if you’re going to invest a ton of money and then skimp on the planning, it’s like taking off on an airplane, not having a flight plan so I think it’s, as they say, it’s better to have a lawyer who provides you with a reasonable fee for services and a game plan than just doing it on your own.

Nobody fights unless there’s money to be made or lost. And if you have an agreement that identifies what everybody’s rights and obligations are ahead of time, then you won’t have a fight because everybody will know, but if there’s no agreement, then you’re going on. People’s understanding. And when money is involved, emotions are involved and they’re understanding changes to fit what they want. Right. But if there’s an agreement there, that’s already covered all these, what ifs, then their emotions won’t run wild and they’ll realize they’ll be bound by what they agreed to before. And so you’ll end up without a big dispute.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

If you are searching for a business attorney near me with decades of experience and a proven track record of successful clients We invite you to review our podcast Episode 19 – Your Business Attorney is a Valuable Partner, as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.  Learn more about how the Watkins Firm can help you to achieve your goals and objectives while helping your business to thrive.