Gregory Rutchik, Esq.

LLC Dispute and Shareholder Lawyer

 

Is your agreement with your LLC members or partners broken? Have you been (or could you be)  locked out? or removed? I am a lawyer and negotiator for business owners and shareholders with a focus on tech based companies. I represent many women founders and business owners. Read my reviews. The client’s business plan dictates the strategy when I negotiate critical agreements and represent shareholders and founders. My goal as outside general counsel is to simplify and close deals and to diffuse and prevent litigation. Listen to my podcast The Art of Negotiation.

 

 

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Gregory Rutchik, Esq. LLC Member and Shareholder Lawyer

 

Is your agreement with your LLC members or partners broken? Have you been (or could you be)  locked out? or removed? I am a lawyer and negotiator for business owners and shareholders with a focus on tech based companies. I represent many women founders and business owners. Read my reviews. The client’s business plan dictates the strategy when I negotiate critical agreements and represent shareholders and founders. My goal as outside general counsel is to simplify and close deals and to diffuse and prevent litigation. Listen to my podcast The Art of Negotiation.

Contact me for a free consultation

Issues:

LLC Member and Shareholder Dispute Lawyer

 
ARE YOU A WOMAN FOUNDER? OWNER?
I represent many women founders and business owners. Read my reviews on Google.
Don’t negotiate your LLC member or shareholder disputes or agreements on your own. I am here to help you identify your leverage and best approach to resolve your member, partner or shareholder dispute and get you back on track.
 
Successful resolution of an LLC member, partnership or shareholder dispute requires planning and strategy.   Your relationship is often not merely economic but you may also be tied personally to your fellow member of your entity, your partner or shareholder. I will ask specific questions and dig deep into the facts of your agreement and arrangement so that I can help design a strategy to resolve your dispute. 
You have worked hard to develop your business. Did you and your partner and other members or shareholders negotiate an agreement that sets out control, what happens if one of you stops working or does not devote full time? Can one of your partners or members lock you out of the computers, make decisions without any checks and balances?

Types of issues my practice seeks to resolve:

  • Who controls the entity and what right does the other members or partners or shareholders have to REMOVE you as a manager?
  • Is your enterprise a 50/50 share and does the agreement set out a method WHEN one of you wishes to voluntarily depart the entity, stops working full time for the entity or some other unplanned event occurs? For example, what happens if the best case scenario occurs and one of you is no longer actively engaged? What happens if the worst case scenario occurs?
  • What are plans for financing? All equity or some convertible notes?
  • Has the business or founder entered into shareholder rights agreements with any investor or other founders?

Valuation. I am often asked to assist clients tell the story of their valuation as part of a businesses’ drive for capitalization and the financing of a business as well as for investor clients who seek to understand or challenge valuation.

  • Analysis often turns to considerations of value versus valuation when a lack of market comparables.
  • Are your business plan assumptions for revenue, costs of goods sold rock solid?
  • What does due diligence reveal about validation of data, sales pipelines, customer agreements and engagement data and path to revenue?

Decision Making.  An entity client must have clear management roles and methods for decision making.  How is the Board informed? How does Management make decisions and resolve internal dissent?

  • How a business make (or does not make) decisions is informative.  Do they take the approach of the Wright Brothers and engage in fact based conflict – testing assumptions, plans and data or does the Company have low push back on their business plan and validation issues?
  • For shareholder/investor clients, what is the make up of the Board and how does the Board inform management decisions?

Agreements and Revenue.  What kinds of agreements does the business enter into to make revenue, make, distribute and promote their product or services? What is the risk – reward balance?

  • Does the Company enter into master service agreements with most customers and strategic partners or customized service agreements?
  • Does the business depend on a third party’s service level agreements for cloud based services, up time, delivery?
  • To what extent does the Company indemnify suppliers for infringement and other third party claims?  Is there appropriate insurance in place?
  • What is the logistic supply chain for the business’ product delivery, fulfillment, post sales service?

IP.  What role does IP play in the business’ competitive advantage and what type of advice has the business received to date?

  • What is a client’s IP Strategy?  While I do not register patents, copyrights or trademarks for clients but I apply over thirty years of strategic IP experience to an IP portfolio including licensing, potential infringement and interaction with patent counsel.
  • Does the Company develop its core technology in-house or for hire with a third party vendor or contractors?

Litigation. Litigation is an inevitable reality for most businesses.  While I have reduced the number of litigation matters that I handle for clients, I often play a close role with litigation counsel in all aspects of a client’s litigation or litigation avoidance.

 
 
 
 

Lawyering is like marathon training

Training for and running marathons takes a diverse set of skills, planning, commitment, focus and execution.  Since 2018, I  trained for and ran four marathons! 

Do Any Of These Situations Resonate?

  • A family office invested in complex tech based private company and has not done sufficient due diligence;
  •  A shareholder has raised questions about your business plan and their investment in your Company;
  • A CEO of tech based private company with dependence on third party IP, distributors or manufacturers;
  • Your key customer, manufacturer, consultants relationship with the Company does not define clear deliverables;
  • Your Form Software Licenses or Master Service Agreement could have major holes?

Maintain the Corporation

Do you systematically inform board members? You may be required to have a board or shareholder meeting.

Is your Corporation formation proper?

i

Key Agreements

Corporation lacks standard and appropriate risk – reward agreements

k

Private Security Sales

Is Your Private Stock Sale Properly Documented?

Your Business Plan

Your business plan needs an honest review to challenge factual representations and assumptions