The Business Practice Group provides clients with a range of services from starting a business and handling daily legal concerns to dealing with complex matters such as mergers, acquisitions, and sales of businesses. The group encompasses the skills of a number of groups, including Bond Financing; Dealer/Distributor and Franchising; Health Care; International; Nonprofit Organizations; Securities; Tax; and Intellectual Property to ensure that all aspects of clients' legal requirements are met. Three attorneys in the Business Practice Group are included in The Best Lawyers in America, and three of them are also recognized in "Legal Elite," a list of the 200 best attorneys in the state by Business North Carolina.
Our attorneys offer substantial knowledge and experience in structuring business entities; negotiating, drafting, and administering contracts and agreements; developing and administering executive compensation, profit sharing, and similar benefit plans; structuring relationships within businesses involving directors, officers, fiduciaries, partners, and general managers; assisting with risk management issues including internal and external policies, and relationships between business parties; financing and securing transactions; and handling major structural changes such as acquisitions, mergers, reorganizations, liquidations, separations, asset purchases, and dissolutions.
The Business Practice Group represents individuals and all types and sizes of associations, businesses, institutions, and proprietorships and serves local, regional, national, and international clients. As a full-service law firm, our resources reach beyond business issues to meet all of a client's requirements.
We take an abiding interest in our clients, taking the time to get to know them and their businesses. Our attorneys visit clients' places of business, provide newsletters and special bulletins to keep them up to date on business issues, and offer seminars for clients either at their businesses or at our offices. To complement the services we provide, our attorneys draw on the skills of other groups in the firm.
Attorneys in the Business Practice Group bring to their work a range of complementary experience, including legal advisor to a number of major companies in North Carolina; legal counsel for private businesses including PepsiCo and Nutri/Systems; vice president and general counsel-corporate secretary for a bank holding company in North Carolina; president of a manufacturing company in North Carolina; chief executive officer of a privately held company and a large franchising company; presidential appointment to serve as the Secretary of Defense's representative to the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe; senior policy advisor and chief of staff to the late U.S. Senator Terry Sanford; law school instructor; chairman of the board of a legal foundation and member of a business commission; member and officer of the state chapter and Coastal Plains Chapter of the North Carolina World Trade Association; member of boards of for-profit, nonprofit, and educational institutions; member of commissions and boards of the state government, the University of North Carolina system, and private business and nonprofit enterprises; continuing legal education lecturer for the North Carolina Bar Association; and member of boards of local nonprofit organizations. Several attorneys are authors and lecturers on litigation and estate and tax planning issues, and two are certified public accountants.
