Franchise Law

Restaurant Law

AdvisorLaw helps clients in every aspect of the restaurant business. As a restaurant owner himself, AdvisorLaw Founder James D’Loughy understands firsthand how a restaurant operates and will stand by your side to ensure that your business venture is successful. Contrary to popular belief, most new restaurants survive their first year—but not much longer. AdvisorLaw represents its clients in all areas that affect the operations of a restaurant including:

• Liquor licensing and sidewalk cafe permits
• Licensing and operation laws
• Florida liquor laws
• Purchasing an existing restaurant
• Corporation, partnership, and business formation
• Commercial leasing
• Employment law
• Employment discrimination
• Employee handbooks
• Sexual harassment
• Negligent property maintenance
• Negligent security
• Negligent food handling
• Unlawful withholding of employee tips
• Civil litigation (breach of contract, vendor disputes)
• Debt collection
• Sales tax criminal prosecution
• OSHA rules and guidelines
• Employment of illegal aliens
• Business advice and risk management

AdvisiorLaw is also qualified to represent restaurant clients in employment issues and in disputes relating to property leasing, financing and loans, equipment leasing, franchise agreements, supply and distribution agreements, intellectual property rights, non-compete agreements, partnership and joint venture agreements, and almost any other type of dispute that could relate to a restaurant. We can help you build, grow, and maintain your restaurant business locally or expand nationally.

Startups Law

Florida based AdvisorLaw’s closely held business and entrepreneurial services practice recognizes that startups and closely held businesses have the same need for sophisticated legal advice as publicly traded companies. We focus on the needs and concerns of closely held business owners and their families. Our firm delivers the quality and personalized service of a small law firm combined with the experience of a large international law firm.

Our ability to provide business and entrepreneurial services draws from our experience in business law, corporate, LLC and partnership matters, taxation, real estate, intellectual property, and litigation. Clients include closely held businesses of all types and sizes, from manufacturers and distributors with substantial annual revenues to small retail and community businesses. Many of these clients are family owned and operated.

AdvisorLaw’s objective is to help clients acquire, grow, protect, and transition their assets. We are advisors as well as problem solvers who analyze problems on the basis of our combined experience and design solutions that meet a client’s particular needs. Clients benefit from our perspective, performance, and personal service.

Technology Sector Law

AdvisorLaw advises multinational technology, telecommunications, Internet, and media companies on the critical legal issues they face in the midst of sweeping technological change. We regularly represent clients in transactions and disputes relating to the procurement, sale, development, and protection of client’s products and services. We also advise established companies in various industries seeking to develop new ways of doing business, as well as global and national companies seeking to procure new information and communications technology products and services.

Our work in the technology sector includes advising supplies and customers on many IT projects, enabling us to understand issues from both sides and giving us a strong basis from which to review, negotiate, and implement agreements and resolve disputes. Our technology and e-commerce lawyers:

• Serve companies internationally and domestically relating to Internet, software, networking, wireless, computers and peripherals, and related industries
• Advise large companies in a variety of industries that are significant purchasers of technology products and services
• Counsel clients on hardware and software systems acquisitions
• Advise companies on data center and business process outsourcing arrangements
• Structure and negotiate strategic alliances and OEM, VAR, and dealer agreements
• Provide IP counsel through our partner firms, encompassing software and business method patents; technology and content licensing; trademark selection, registration and maintenance; copyright registration and protection strategies; and IP audits
• Advise clients regarding online commercial ventures, marketing and promotional law compliance, electronic publishing, and taxation of online activity
• Represent clients in supplier/distributor, domain name, trademark, and other technology-related disputes
• Represent clients in Internet law and e-commerce, including governments, Internet publishers, e-commerce sites, and companies developing digital technologies and business models for the future

Web and E-commerce Law

AdvisorLaw provides a full range of high-quality legal services to hi-tech companies and other companies engaged in doing business electronically. We focus on addressing the domestic and international legal and business issues that continue to arise as rapid changes take place in the areas of the Internet, e-commerce, and technology. The complexities of doing business electronically raise a host of legal questions that are further complicated by the continued globalization of world economies.

While the Internet has developed into an efficient and ever-expanding means of doing business, companies must proceed with caution. The global nature of the Internet and the continued deregulation of the telecommunications sector have created a complicated and shifting legal environment that affects the markets that our clients are entering. For this reason, AdvisorLaw is proactive in its approach and works with clients to adopt the necessary business practices to ensure that potential problems are detected and cured early.

AdvisorLaw offers a full range of legal advice on e-commerce and Internet issues including:

• Establishing a presence on the Internet
• Electronic money
• Domain name disputes
• Data protection
• Confidentiality and security issues
• Intellectual property
• Advertising and marketing
• Litigation
• Linking agreements
• Contracting over the Internet
• Taxation
• Encryption and electronic signature

In-House Counsel Services

As a decision-maker at a small to mid-sized company, you understand that your legal strategy must comprise a fundamental pillar of your business strategy, but where do you turn for the expertise in developing and executing this strategy? Until now there have been only two choices: outside counsel or hiring of a full-time in-house attorney.

Experienced outside counsel is expensive. But even if you do not care about the cost, outside counsel generally lacks the specific expertise required to develop your business strategy. To obtain this expertise, you could hire full-time in-house counsel to work with your organization, but this would likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee salaries. In all likelihood, neither outside nor in-house counsel is appropriate for your organization.

AdvisorLaw offers a new option to business decision-makers who are unsatisfied with the status quo for how legal services are provided. Borrowing from the business model of fractional share jet or property ownership, AdvisorLaw has developed part-time, strategic in-house counsel services to provide your organization with the same quality of in-house business advice enjoyed by corporations that maintain full-time in-house staff.

The hourly fee rates for AdvisorLaw attorneys are significantly lower than average outside counsel fees for legal professionals with comparable experience levels. We are passionate about identifying billing relationships that make sense for our clients and allow us to be deeply involved in our clients’ business. Although we can provide services on an hourly basis for about half of the comparable rate of experienced lawyers practicing at large firms, many of our clients prefer to use creative billing structures that free them (and us) from the pressures of hourly billing and unexpectedly high legal bills.

Brand & Product Law

The brand issues surrounding new product development and innovation plans for existing product portfolios or brand extensions require careful planning, particularly where multinational promotional campaigns are used to drive sales. AdvisorLaw has widespread experience in advising companies on product innovation and marketing issues.