Legal guidance for the fast lane
We help with the unique challenges and needs of tech companies at every stage of growth, from inception to exit.
Whether you’re an entrepreneur with an idea, a startup scaling rapidly, or an established company navigating complex transactions, crises, or compliance with federal, state, and local laws, we offer skilled legal support to help you thrive.
Support that drives your business forward
At SSL, we understand the legal issues that keep business owners up at night. You need to feel confident that contracts are structured properly to protect your interests and minimize risk. And time is money, so you need the highest levels of responsiveness and accessibility to keep innovating and growing your business.
That’s why we combine industry experience with a profound grasp of your specific operations and objectives—to anticipate your needs and provide straightforward, effective advice that helps you:
Companies like:
MSPs
Software + SaaS
Digital Agencies
Artificial Intelligence
Fintech
Datacenter Hosts
Ecommerce
Professional Service Firms
PropTech
Noncompliance can lead to consequences ranging from small fines to losing your business license. We keep up with the law to advise you on staying in compliance and dealing yourself a better hand.
To scale, you need technology. We use our proficiency in tech and business law to help you drive business value, improve margins, and obtain greater financial results from your investments, so you can scale smarter.
Our clients often express that we put their minds at ease when they felt overwhelmed. As your company grows and times change, you will face expected and unexpected challenges. As a trusted advisor who knows the journey you face, we’ll help you make informed decisions about internal processes and legal matters.
Full-lifecycle solutions for high-growth companies
SSL is sensitive to the needs of exponential-growth companies, including tech startups, across industries like fintech, health, consumer services, business services, specialty retail, insurance, engineering, real estate, and more.
Our tailored business law services can include but aren’t limited to:
You have enough on your plate without legal matters being an additional source of stress. So, while you put out your other fires, we provide on-demand general counsel (without required retainers) for companies that don’t have full-time, in-house counsel or whose in-house counsel could use some support.
Whatever your business need—Managed risk? Secured assets? New capabilities through the right partners?—we can probably help.
- Strategic risk mitigation advising
- Business formation and structure
- Investment management (investors and equity holders)
- Intellectual property protection
- Employment and independent contractor matters
- Noncompete and nonsolicitation matters
- Regulatory compliance (including HIPAA, GDPR)
- Corporate restructuring
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Joint ventures
- Market expansion and strategic alliances
- Product development and compliance
- Technology licensing and investments
- Negotiating and drafting contracts and agreements
- Reviewing NDAs from vendors or customers
Handling business disputes, like breaches of contract, early terminations, and past-due accounts.
As an emerging business or startup, having the right structure from the get-go will help you avoid unnecessary disputes and costly restructuring down the line—often hurriedly before a transaction or fundraising round.
We know startups move quickly in all they do, so we help you get up and running as fast as possible without putting you through a “one-size-fits-all” process.
- Entity formation
- Intellectual property protection and licensing
- Founder and voting agreements
- Equity incentive plan management
- Data protection and asset management
- Commercial transactions
A relationship where you’re building something together requires careful structuring, and a business partnership is a weighty matter. When creating your partnership or ironing out a dispute, we stick by our philosophy that it’s better to maintain positive relationships than burn bridges.
- Partnership and founder agreements
- Structural advice
- Separation and withdrawal agreements
- Enforcing rights
- Shareholder and stockholder agreements
Thorough protection of your intellectual property is vital to protecting and monetizing the product or service you’ve worked so hard on. We diligently help you protect, maintain, and enforce your intellectual property.
- Copyrights: Original artistic or literary work.
- Trademarks: Words, phrases, symbols, or designs that identify and distinguish one party’s goods from others’.
- Service Marks: Similar to trademarks, they identify and distinguish the source of a service rather than goods.
- Trade Secrets: Confidential business information that provides a competitive edge (formulas, algorithms, customer lists, price lists, strategies, sometimes source code, etc.).
- Trade Dress: The look and feel or the appearance of the product or packaging that distinguishes a particular product from similar products.
As you work towards growth goals like product-market fit, customer acquisition, and increasing revenue, SSL offers on-demand strategic guidance for the increasingly complex legal challenges you face.
- Governance policies
- Board management
- Customer and vendor agreements and contracts
- Strategic alliances and joint ventures
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Data privacy and security policies
- Succession planning
Your team is a big part of running your business, so we offer employment and labor services to help with successful hiring and management. We provide advice to help you avoid litigation, meet compliance, and protect your company assets and goodwill.
- Employment contracts and contractor agreements
- Employment training and compliance
- Employee benefits
- Organizational restructuring strategy
- Non-competes, trade secrets, early termination, etc.
- Due diligence in mergers and acquisitions
- Immigration planning and compliance
Ensure the fine print of any contract—between your employees, partners, or clients—is ironclad to protect against unintended consequences or liability. We also bring extensive negotiation experience to help you get what you want while mitigating risk and maintaining a positive relationship with your customers and partners.
- Letters of Intent
- Partnership agreements
- Shareholder agreements
- Joint venture agreements
- Voting agreements
- Customer agreements
- Supplier and vendor agreements
- Stock and asset purchase agreements
- Indemnity agreements
- Settlement agreements
- Distribution agreements
- Service agreements
- Licensing agreements
- Sales commission agreements
- Financing documents
- Security agreements
- Personal guarantees
- And more
If you’re looking to sell your business or acquire a business to expand your markets or products, there are a lot of moving parts (legal, strategic, and financial) that all have long-term implications. We’ll help you reduce risk and get the most out of your M&A deal according to your transaction needs.
- Transaction advising
- Due diligence
- Purchase and sale documents
- Merger documents
- Loan agreements
- Employment agreements
- Antitrust advising
- Boards of directors advising and resolution
- Post-closing rights and obligations advising
- Post-acquisition integration advising
- Earnout maximizing for sellers
- Negotiated a professional services agreement with a large healthcare organization, including the terms of a mutually beneficial business associate agreement.
- Provided outside counsel to a publicly traded company regarding their technology contracts.
- Prepared website terms and conditions and privacy policy for an international digital media company with millions of followers.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most important legal considerations for startups?
“Most important” is debatable, but it’s extremely important to choose the right legal structure, protect your business ideas, have thoroughly protective contracts, document founder relationships correctly, and meet federal and state regulations.
When should I go about hiring a lawyer?
It’s best to have a lawyer on your side from the start. Seeking proactive legal advice can prevent costly disputes and ensure you’re well-prepared for growth. You don’t want to wait until you get sued to seek legal advice from a business attorney.
Why is business and startup law important?
The law gives you a framework for smooth operations, dispute resolution, and enforcing your rights, but only if you follow it. Having a lawyer on your side protects you from violating laws you didn’t know about and allows you to get the most benefit back from the law.
Work smarter, not harder
There’s another old saying: business owners refuse to work a 40-hour-a-week job for someone else, so they work 80+ hours for themselves. We see this play out time and time again with many entrepreneurs who are, by nature, problem solvers and take great pride in solving challenges themselves. But this poses a new problem when it comes to legal counsel.
No matter how much time you spend DIY-ing legal contracts and other needs, you won’t be as safe as if you hired an expert, and a mistake can cost you more resources—or your business. Many owners assume legal services are too expensive and think generic online templates will protect their interests, but seeking legal advice proactively often proves to be much less costly than dispute fees.
Sometimes, the smartest thing is to let an expert help, feel the weight lift off your shoulders, and spend those newly freed hours on growing your business.
Let’s protect your business. Schedule a consultation to get started.
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What to expect:
- Use the form to schedule a consultation.
- You’ll talk with a real attorney about your business and needs and how we can help. Then, you’ll get an initial estimate.
- If you like what you hear, you’ll get an engagement letter and pay the deposit.
- We’ll get started protecting your business.