If you are searching for a proven San Diego business attorney with almost four decades of experience in all aspects of business and corporate law we invite you to consider the Watkins firm.  Your business lawyer should be a trusted business advisor who has a proven track record of guiding hundreds or thousands of other businesses like yours through every phase of business formation and operations, challenges and opportunities alike.

Key Takeaways of What to Look for in a Proven San Diego Business Attorney:

• Experience is the most important ingredient of a business attorney.  You’re looking for someone who has “been there, done that,” guiding hundreds if not thousands of businesses like yours from startup, through growth and expansion, and ultimately to a merger, sale, or acquisition.
• Business attorneys should offer a broad range of services including, but not limited to business formation, contracts, advisory services and all documentation and process required to be a California employer, governance and compliance including creation and update of corporate documents, as well as protection of intellectual property and licensing and distribution agreements.
• An experienced business attorney must be able to efficiently resolve any business dispute.  Ask about your lawyer’s proven strategies to resolve any internal or external business dispute, and the ability to represent you in any legal forum such as negotiations, filing a lawsuit, settlement conferences, mediation, arbitration, and at trial.
• A business lawyer should be one of your closest business advisors.  You should be able to pick up the phone and call for quick advice without a bill, or to sit down on a regular basis to discuss where you’ve been and where you want the company to go, and how to successfully get there.

What is the difference between the companies who succeed and thrive in San Diego and Southern California and the majority of businesses that fail in their first five years?

Comprehensive Business Legal Services and General Counsel

The Watkins firm offers 40+ years of experience serving the business, science and tech, real estate and medical / healthcare communities here in San Diego and across California.  Your proven San Diego business attorney from our law firm provides business and corporate services to support your company or enterprise at every stage of the life of a business, including but not limited to:

• General Business Counsel
• Formation and entity selection
• Corporate documents, bylaws, operating agreements, shareholder agreements
• Corporate governance and compliance
• Business contracts between your company and its vendors and suppliers, employees and customers
• Intellectual property
• Licensing and distribution
• Mergers and Acquisitions, stock purchase or asset purchase agreements
• Dispute resolution and business litigation
• Disputes between co-owners, members in an LLC or shareholders or derivative lawsuits
• Medical practices and healthcare business including Management Services Organizations or MSOs
• Employer defense and sound advice and counsel for California employers
• Sale of your Business or Corporate dissolution

The Foundations of a Successful Business

What are the foundations of a successful business and how can a proven San Diego business lawyer help your company to survive and thrive?  Start-up businesses and corporations require advice on the selection of entities as well as the preparation of all corporate documents and agreements between the members or shareholders.  We help you to anticipate every foreseeable contingency and draft documents that will protect your company or corporation at every stage of its growth and operations.

We help you to develop and implement the crucial business contracts that will govern every aspect of your company.  We maintain a large, proprietary library of proven, tested contracts, due diligence checklists, corporate documents, and other legal instruments. A well-crafted contract is the foundation of all business transactions and relationships, and the Watkins Firm attorneys cost-effectively review and custom tailor existing proven contracts to fit your unique applications, and guide you and other parties successfully through every aspect of business.

We help to ensure your company remains compliant with all federal, state and local laws and regulations.  This is especially true for a medical practice or healthcare business.  We provide sound general business counsel, much like the coach for a professional athlete or Olympian.  After almost four decades of experience in the San Diego business community we can provide insight into the strategies that help you to avoid the pitfalls that have slowed or destroyed other businesses while navigating smoothly through growth, mergers and acquisitions and ultimately the sale of your company.

Pro-Tip: “We have of course, very knowledgeable attorneys, but we also have a higher percentage of support staff, paralegals, administrators in house, HR people so that when our clients have a basic question about employment practices and they don’t want to spend the high attorney rate, they can contact one of our administrators or one of our paralegals and ask a question, cost them a lot less money. And everybody here has been working on these cases for years and years. So the knowledge might not be at the fingertips of the employer, but we answer that same question every week for one of our clients.

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. 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.

We’ve had clients for decades. And when our clients do well, our attorneys feel like they’re doing well outside of whether they’re getting paid a whole bunch of money or not or fees or anything. We have long term clients. And our attorneys really feel good when things turn out for them because, on the litigation side, they go through stress and we go through stress. And when we resolve a dispute and our clients are happy, we’re happy. And we’re proud to help their transactions to flow smoothly.

Our clients have owned their company for years and years and years, and they want to sell it. They believe they have a good deal on the table and we want to do everything we can to make sure that goes smoothly. And our client gets all of their benefits of the bargain, everything they wanted. We want to do our best to make sure they get that. And if it happens and they’re happy, then we are proud. We’re very proud and we’re happy for them. So this combined knowing someone for 30+ years, their highs and lows, their difficult times, their good times, you can imagine, you really feel a bond for your clients.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

The Proven San Diego Business Attorney for Your Unique Company

If you are searching for a proven San Diego business attorney with decades of experience to provide sound counsel, efficient legal services and the type of advice and support that is sure to help your company to grow and prosper we invite you to review our podcast Episode 10 – The Importance of a Strong Corporate Attorney as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.  Ask about our unique approach to resolving disputes and litigation, and our goal to provide the highest standard of business legal service in a timely, effective and cost-efficient manner.

Meet Daniel Watkins:

Daniel W. Watkins is a true people person who sincerely listens. He cares deeply about what others are going through.  Dan enjoys digging into the facts and finding creative solutions to problems.  He contributes his insights candidly and constructively.

Dan’s interest in people make him deeply invested in every relationship and his exuberant personality makes him a true litigator. Dan fights for his clients with a fierce and calculated commitment.

Dan has practiced in the areas of business, medical practices and healthcare business, high tech/science, real estate and employment defense law since 1987. He is a trusted litigation strategist and true trial attorney with over 50 jury and bench trials to his credit. Dan has successfully represented both large companies and individuals and achieved substantial victories in well-publicized trials throughout California and the U.S.

He is experienced in business and corporate formation and administration, as well as all forms of alternative dispute resolution, including binding arbitration and mediation.

THE ROAD TO BECOMING A BUSINESS LAWYER AND LITIGATOR

Dan has almost 40 years of experience working with, for and against some of the largest insurance companies in the country. He has successfully tried and litigated cases in the areas of Healthcare Compliance, Commercial Litigation, Unfair Business Practices, Fraud, Breach of Contract, Battery, Premises Liability, Product Defect, Medical Malpractice, Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Construction Defect, as well as Unfair Competition, Defamation, and Trade Secrets.

In December 2003, Dan commenced litigation against Health South Surgery Centers-West, Inc and its’ subsidiaries, exposing the company’s extensive mismanagement and misconduct of its’ surgery centers. Dan has also been asked by some of California’s largest municipalities and corporations to conduct legally required investigations into matters involving alleged employment discrimination and harassment.