Corporate and Business Law:
Understanding The Difference Will Help Business Owners Thrive
What Does It Mean to Be A Corporate Attorney?
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CORPORATE LAWYER AND A BUSINESS LAWYER?
Dunlap Law’s business lawyers can advise on every aspect of running a business. From the sole proprietor selling jam at a farmer’s market to three friends forming an LLC together to a corporation with twenty shareholders, all these forms of business fall within the scope of a corporate lawyer or business law firm practice. Corporate law varies by state, though there are similarities across most states in the United States. Therefore, you need a corporate attorney who specializes in the law of the state where your business is headquartered. Corporate attorneys invest years of study and practice in learning how state laws, court decisions, and best practices intersect to impact our corporate law and business law firm clients.
Our work as corporate attorneys and business attorneys is closely intertwined. Dunlap Law’s corporate attorney work focuses on legal issues related to how businesses are formed and governed. Corporate law concerns shareholders, LLC members, partners, directors, and officers and how they govern the businesses they run.
Our business law firm work concerns all the legal protections that businesses need in their dealings with others. For example, our business attorney work includes contracts, leases, license agreements, and employee issues.
Dunlap Law is a woman-owned and led corporate law firm and business law firm headquartered in Richmond, Virginia with a second location in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Our Monterey, Virginia office is near Charlottesville, Waynesboro, Staunton, and Harrisonburg. Our top rated business lawyers routinely earn accolades from our peers and business leaders in Virginia. We’ve earned “Go To Business Lawyer”, “Rising Star”, and “Super Lawyers” honors.
As corporate attorneys and business attorneys, we advise businesses and people with corporate law or business law issues – directors, officers, shareholders, partners, or LLC members – on a wide variety of business law issues.
Here are some examples of our recent work:
-
- Advising a minority shareholder on his rights to redeem his shares to the corporation. As his corporate attorney, we are advising him based on the corporation’s charter documents (its articles of incorporation and bylaws), a buy-sell agreement he signed years ago, and Virginia law. We’re advising not only on his legal rights under corporate law but also on how to strategically position him for maximum leverage.
-
- Advising the board of directors of a mid-sized company regarding the potential redemption of shares from one class of shareholders. As corporate lawyers, we are collaborating with the client’s fractional CFO to help the board determine whether the company’s finances support redemption of shares.
-
- Counseling a company that suffered an email hack that caused their customer to pay its six-figure bill to the hacker instead of the company. This business law issue can be especially tricky to navigate. Hacks are now a normal part of our work as business lawyers and we are standing by our business law clients, ready to help.
-
- Helping a member of an LLC resign from the LLC and receive payment for his membership value. Years ago, he personally guaranteed two lines-of-credit for the LLC and, as his corporate attorneys, we are helping him ensure that these debts are paid from LLC funds.
-
- Reconstructing documents to substantiate the percent of ownership claimed by one member of an LLC. He hopes to sell his LLC and retire, but the corporate law records are incomplete. As his corporate lawyers, we are helping him create the documentary record that supports his ownership of the business he has been running for twenty years.
