Overview
Innovation sparks emerging businesses. Entrepreneurial success is driven by vision, commitment, and a unique kind of energy. Our Innovation Team respects and reflects that spirit.
The team is made up of attorneys whose experience touches on virtually every area vital to start-ups. They offer the range of skills necessary to help you overcome challenges, minimize risks and maximize opportunities. Legal counsel attuned to the needs of entrepreneurs is an essential resource, and we aim to be partners in your success.
Our team blends the capabilities of four key practices: Corporate, Labor and Employment, Intellectual Property, and Economic Development. It includes some of the most experienced attorneys, many of whom have been recognized as among America’s leading lawyers in their respective areas. This translates to confident, knowledgeable representation by professionals who understand the pressures and potential of start-ups and can provide counsel on matters ranging from structuring to securities, financing to M&A, control to capital formation, employee relations to employee benefits, and patent protection to technology transfer. Whether you’re seeking advice on your employee handbook or seeking venture capital, we can help.
Getting Started
Our corporate attorneys have worked with a variety of promising enterprises in fields such as software development, technology, R&D, manufacturing, supply-chain, web-based and other retail, healthcare, financial and insurance, communications, printing and publishing, and industrial services. This broad background in multiple economic sectors is matched by an equally broad base of capabilities, which include:
- Business formation
- Business plan review
- Contacting and negotiating transactions with venture capitalists, private equity funds, and angel investor groups
- Crowdfunding
- Selecting and engaging investment bankers and other consultants
- Serving as borrower’s counsel for loan transactions
- Complying with the securities laws for private placements and public offerings
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Commercial contracts
- IP licensing and technology transfer
- Franchising
- Converting a company from one type of entity into another
- Succession planning
- Restructuring enterprises in response to growth opportunities or other conditions
Protecting the Talent
Entrepreneurs say one of the most important resources is their people. We help you protect that resource with one of the largest, most experienced labor and employment practices available. We represent entrepreneurs in all areas of the employment relationship and work on issues of special interest to start-ups, such as:
- Executive compensation and employee benefits
- Wage and hour, and wage payment matters
- Offer letters and employment agreements
- Non-competition, non-solicitation, and non-disclosure agreements
- Evaluation of claims for violation of restrictive covenants
- Assignment of invention agreements
- Stock options, phantom equity, and other incentive compensation
Monetizing your Ideas
Our IP attorneys have experience with diverse industries and technologies and possess the legal and technical backgrounds to help new enterprises pursue, protect, and harness the full power of their creativity. We keep clients a step ahead of the innovation curve in complex and often-evolving matters such as Internet law, technology transfer, licensing, patent prosecution and protection, trade secrets, and IP litigation and dispute resolution. Our goal is to safeguard your assets and help you develop strategies that ensure those assets deliver optimal value.
Growing your company
When it is time to expand, we help you negotiate. Our economic development team has provided capital project support to businesses of all sizes and in all segments of commerce. Whether the task is the negotiation and documentation of state and local incentives or coordination of legal and consulting services, our attorneys understand how to structure the most advantageous deal to meet your specific goals.
Full service, full resources
Because Maynard Nexsen is a multi-service firm, emerging companies have access to a complete range of skills that go beyond those offered by our Innovation Team. With dozens of practice areas – including litigation, tax, government representation and international law– we have the knowledge and capabilities to shape specific solutions to specific problems. We are also sensitive to the financial challenges of entrepreneurs and work to be flexible in structuring our fees.
*Maynard Nexsen’s staff includes experienced, registered lobbyists.