Are you searching for experienced California business attorneys based in San Diego?  Is your company expanding into the area, or working on a merger or acquisition in the region? Your company needs the experienced business attorneys at the Watkins Firm.  We have 40+ years of experience serving the business, science and tech, real estate and medical / healthcare communities here in San Diego and throughout California.   Every business needs the advice, counsel and legal services of a business attorney they can trust to help guide business decisions and resolve disputes.

3 Important Takeaways Regarding What to Look For in a California or San Diego Business Attorney:

• Nothing takes the place of experience.  Ask about the extent of the firm’s experience in your type of business, and/or the markets you intend to serve.
• A strong business law firm should provide a broad range of legal services across all aspects of business formation, transactions, contracts, mergers and acquisitions, employer defense and advice as a California employer, as well as effective dispute resolution.
• Your business attorney should be one of your most trusted business advisors, ready to provide a free consultation on the important questions, challenges, and opportunities you face at each stage of your company’s growth.

Business Formation and Transaction Attorneys

The first step in the life of any company involves business formation – the selection of the entity that will best suit the goals and objectives of the business, and a thorough review and tailoring of the operating agreement (LLC) or corporate documents (corporation) to your unique business application.  Why are you in business?  Why have a company?  The answer: the protections of the corporate veil.  Your company separates the personal assets and accounts of its owners from the risks and liabilities of the company.  Business is about risk.  It is also about the rewards of risk.  Your company should provide the sound foundation to allow you to take the risks necessary to generate a profitable return on your investment.

The heart of business is the transaction.  Transactions between people, companies, suppliers and product and service providers alike are the measure of any business.  Your business transactional attorneys at the Watkins Firm manage all of the day-to-day legal work, business contracts, corporate documentation such as the shareholders’ agreement, bylaws or the LLC operating agreement, governance and compliance as well as the protection of intellectual property.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions are extremely complex legal transactions.  Our attorneys guide you through the acquisition of vital equipment, real estate, inventory, vehicles and other asset purchases ensuring you are protected from contingent liabilities while verifying clear title and other important aspects of the deal.  We support negotiations, create and review business contracts and generally work to ensure your transactions are structured and documented to ensure success.

When the matter at hand involves a merger or the acquisition of another company you need the proven, experienced business attorneys of the Watkins Firm.  Stock purchase acquisitions are legally and financially complex transactions.  The devil (and the profit) is in the details.  Thorough due diligence is the key and the Watkins Firm provides extensive due diligence checklists and investigative services developed and improved in successful transactions across more than four decades.

Our proven process and proprietary checklists ensure you are protected as a seller, or thoroughly informed and protected as a buyer.

Business Transactions Should be Properly and Profitably Finished, and Stay Finished – Prevent Business Disputes and Lawsuits

Your experienced business attorneys at the Watkins Firm ensure your business transactions are properly and profitably finished, and stay finished.  We help to prevent disputes and litigation while making your business relationships and transactions smoother and more profitable.  Ask about our unique approach to resolving business disputes and lawsuits, and how Watkins Firm is able to resolve the vast majority of these cases through effective, leveraged negotiation.  This is the fastest, least expensive strategy to resolve any business-related dispute.

Your San Diego business needs an experienced business attorney and transactional lawyer who is also a seasoned and trustworthy business general counsel.  As your general counsel the Watkins Firm acts as a coach and valuable adviser.  Our experienced attorneys have served San Diego’s business community for almost four decades.  We have experience in virtually every form of business, vertical market or professional practice.  We will help you to develop the strategy which avoids the expensive pitfalls that have deterred other businesses like yours.  We provide insight into your business at each stage of it’s life and proven strategies to help move you forward.

Proven Lawyers for California Employers

California is the most challenging environment in the United States for those who would be employers.  The Watkins Firm provides legal services for employers and strong employer defense when disputes and litigation arise.  A good defense begins on offense.  Your Watkins Firm attorneys work with you to develop and implement strong employee handbooks and policies and procedures.  We provide guidance on the processes to follow, the records to keep and the steps required for review, discipline, advancement and termination.

California and San Diego employers face a rapidly rising climate of wage and hour disputes, Private Attorneys General Act or PAGA litigation, and an ever changing and increasing burden of compliance with federal, state and local laws, ordinances and regulations.  You need the support, guidance and protection of our experienced, proven employer defense attorneys.

Pro-Tip: “California is, by far, the hardest and most challenging state in which to be an employer.  Without question.  It’s earned, it really is. If you really want to lay it out, most of the politicians are funded by labor unions. They’re all about making it painful for employers to hire them. Anything you do that is technically wrong. The state of California has hired or licensed a whole bunch of lawyers out there to be bounty hunters, and instead of funding any regulation and enforcement, they just said, we can say whatever we want. And there will be a lawyer out there who wants to get attorney’s fees out of an employer and be a bounty hunter to try to catch you at the tiniest mistakes and make you pay dearly for it.

So as an employer, what’s the best word of caution? Pay attention and have a good lawyer.

Have a good, experienced lawyer that stays up to speed and takes those little technical matters seriously, because it doesn’t cost much to be in compliance. It really doesn’t, but it costs so much to get caught. Usually you don’t get caught for a few months and before you know it, you could literally lose hundreds of thousands of dollars for an accounting error or the way you put your paychecks out or your refusal or failure to put up a little sign in your break room. All those little things. There’s some lawyer out there, Mr. Bounty Hunter, looking for you to try to collect five, 10, $15,000 in fees for tiny mistakes.

Fast action in any of these matters is the key. Pick up the phone and call us the second that you think something’s going on. Why does that matter? We can help you to take quick, much less expensive action to mitigate your exposure, or remediate it altogether.

Judges don’t really like these cases, and there’s a lot of technical reasons to throw them out because they’re turning into sort of a ‘shady PI lawyer’ case, the person that hangs out in the hospital room. These kind of employment lawyers are starting to be like that. And so if they don’t follow all the rules and you get to court in the first couple of months and you file a motion saying you didn’t give the proper notice, you didn’t state the proper cause of action, the judge will throw it out.

If you know ahead of time and good experienced lawyer that’s not just ready to milk you, because that’s what the wrong lawyers do, they won’t propose a solution. They’ll just propose fight, fight.

But sometimes we have our employer clients come in and we say to them, ‘no, no, no, don’t pay us all this money. Pay the extra $3,000 in wages. Send out amended pay stubs before you even have to answer the complaint.’ And guess what? All of the causes of action that have attorney’s fees in them are gone. Nobody wants to see you anymore because of that. So yeah, quick action gives your lawyer the right to do things that just destroy a case in the beginning.

And our goal with our employees is to help them out. We’re here to help them through this and be there for them when they really need us. When you do defense work, you want to get rid of cases as soon as possible. Nobody in business makes money just staying in litigation. Our employer clients appreciate that.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Your Experienced Business Attorneys at the Watkins Firm

Your experienced business attorneys at the Watkins Firm help you to focus on the information and business signs which really matter so that you can make sound business decisions.  Today’s business climate is more competitive than ever, and the speed of business communications and expectations are at their highest and fastest point in history.

What is the best route to success for your company?  How will you plan for and measure that?  What are the challenges you will face, obstacles to be overcome, employer-related and business disputes to be avoided or resolved, transactional opportunities to plan and implement and goals to be achieved?

If you are interested in learning more about why your Southern California or San Diego business needs an experienced business attorney and transactional lawyer we invite you to review our podcast Episode 39 – What Keeps Employers Up at Night as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today. Let’s discuss your unique business, the challenges and opportunities in front of you, and the multiple ways in which your business attorneys at the Watkins Firm can help you to accomplish your goals and dreams.