Major Areas of Practice
- Commercial and Corporate Law
- Securities Law
- Business and Estate Planning and Taxation
- Municipal Law
- Construction and Development
- Litigation
The firm represents individuals, business entities, private, and public corporations in the following areas:
- Entity formation and governance, including limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations;
- Business acquisitions, mergers, and commercial transactions.
We also serve as general counsel to a variety of established and start-up businesses, trade associations, real estate syndication firms, and municipal corporations.
Securities LawOur firm conducts a substantial securities practice. Representative clients and transactions for which we have acted as counsel include:
- Public companies whose shares are traded on all Canadian stock exchanges, the American Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ and the NASD’s OTC Electronic Bulletin Board.
- Numerous Canadian and U.S. securities broker-dealer firms.
- Services as issuers’ and underwriters' counsel in public and private offerings.
- Mergers and acquisitions between privately-held companies.
Business and Estate Planning and Taxation
A significant aspect of our practice integrates business and estate planning for business owners and individuals, as well as providing tax planning for individual, business and corporate clients. This representation includes:
- Tax evaluation and analysis of individual, partnership, and corporate business interests;
- Tax and estate planning;
- Representation of clients before the Internal Revenue Service and other tax tribunals;
- Drafting comprehensive estate plans wills, creation of revocable and irrevocable trusts, including life insurance trusts, education trusts, grantor retained income trusts ("GRITs");
- Charitable gift planning, including the formation of non-profit organizations, charitable family foundations, charitable remainder trusts, and charitable lead trusts; and
- Administration of probate and guardianship proceedings.
Among the municipal law services rendered by the firm are the following:
- Service as general counsel to several special purpose districts, for which the firm frequently conducts annexation proceedings, local improvement districts, construction contracting and litigation, municipal bond proceedings, comprehensive planning, general contracting and other services.
- Service as general counsel to the Port of Port Townsend, which operates marinas, a regional airport and a rapidly-growing ship yard.
- Service as general counsel to Jefferson Transit, a transit agency providing bus services on the Olympic Peninsula.
- Representation of public entities and private individuals in condemnation actions.
- Drafting of proposed state legislation affecting municipalities.
We represent numerous parties in the process of real property development. Our services include:
- Representing buyers and sellers of real estate;
- Representing developers in resolving environmental and land use matters;
- Representing contractors in negotiating, documenting, and administering construction contracts and sub-contracts, including complying with prevailing wage and other employment regulation issues.
Litigation is merely one tool for resolving disputes among parties to commercial transactions. Because litigation can be costly and time-consuming, we rarely recommend it as the tool of first resort. In our experience, various alternative dispute resolution processes, such as mediation, often yield results equally favorable to those obtained at trial, in less time, with the client’s net recovery equaling or exceeding results at trial.
Our litigation practice encompasses a wide range of substantive areas of the law. Significant areas of our litigation experience have included:
- Representing contractors, owners, and design professionals in construction and real estate litigation.
- Representing plaintiffs and defendants in securities actions.
- Representing carriers in cargo claims and liability litigation.
- Representing municipal corporations in condemnation proceedings.
- Representing real property owners in boundary disputes and adverse possession claims.