Overview
Nimble, Practical Mechanisms and Services
At Fredrikson & Byron, we've built a reputation as the firm where "law and business meet" by bringing business acumen and entrepreneurial thinking to our work with corporate clients, and by operating as business advisors as well as legal counselors. We find this approach to be of particular value in the work we do with our emerging business clients.
Managing legal work for newer businesses requires a sense of judgment, risk assessment, and entrepreneurial thinking.”
We look at emerging businesses as unique entities with unique needs. After all, the very time and cost-intensive type of document that may be appropriate for a $500 million corporation is not commonly appropriate for our emerging business clients—in terms of cost-effectiveness or their stage of development. Managing legal work for newer businesses requires a sense of judgment, risk assessment and entrepreneurial thinking. It requires the insight to customize quality tools that are useful and realistic.
For certain new businesses, the most practical document is often the simplest one: a mechanism that requires few signatures, or is easy to implement. For other clients, it's most sensible to cover some areas in depth but to leave other areas with broader, consciously loose protections, pending further development. For example, for many start-ups, the ideal non-compete agreement provides initial, fundamental protections without delving into an infinite variety of potentially divisive what-ifs. Our approach leaves room for creativity and flexibility as the needs evolve.
This entrepreneurial mindset runs throughout our firm. It's a mindset that enables us to come to situations with business objectives as well as legal objectives firmly in mind, and to approach legal conflicts as business problems to be solved by both parties rather than opportunities to score points as lawyers—an attitude which quite often helps move everybody toward satisfactory results quickly.
Seed Money and Financing Services
Over the years, we've provided advice and counsel to numerous clients that have grown from garage to IPO to industry leadership. Along the way we've built up relationships with venture sources in many areas. We maintain a current database of funding sources and seed money networks; we often use our contacts and information to connect emerging business clients with seed money sources.
Deep, Business-Focused Practice Groups
The intensity of our business focus has led us to develop strength in many areas critical to emerging businesses.
- Our Intellectual Property group offers a wide range of patent, copyright, trademark and other technology services. Our IP Group is on the cutting edge of developing business method patents for on-line commerce and protecting proprietary patents on the Internet.
- Our work in the Life Sciences area is particularly comprehensive; attorneys in practice groups across the firm have done extensive research and legal work on behalf of clients throughout the health care field: physicians and providers; medical products manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies; hospitals and inpatient settings; and payers and insurers.
- Our Corporate service area has tremendous expertise in putting together offering documents, handling investments and infusions of capital, working with private financing, mezzanine funding, traditional IPOs, public offerings via the Internet, and more.
- The attorneys within our Internet, Technology & E-Commerce group have been serving dot-coms with an array of specially honed services long before many other major firms began working in the area.
The same entrepreneurial orientation that keeps us delving into new areas and introducing fresh conveniences, such as Web site audits, also drives us to continually advance our expertise within each of our practice groups. In fact, the range and depth of each of our practice groups means that we are typically able to assemble interdisciplinary teams that are ideal for a given client in terms of background and expertise, with lawyers who operate from a foundation of real-world corporate experience.
Call (612) 492-7000 to learn more about the projects, processes, and full turn-key start-up services we provide for new and emerging businesses.
Bios
Primary Attorneys
Thomas B. Archbold
John J. Erhart
Thomas W. Garton
Steven E. Helland
Thomas R. Hipkins
Lisa Holter
Ryan S. Johnson
Thomas A. Judd
Sean P. Kearney
Patrick J. Kelly
Ann M. Ladd
Kimberly A. Lowe
Erik E. Malinowski
Christopher J. Melsha
Ryan G. Miest
Robert K. Ranum
Sara M. Reisdorf
Simon C. Root
Melodie R. Rose
John A. Satorius
Thomas F. Steichen
Jon E. Strinden
Todd A. Taylor
David C. West
Daniel A. Yarano