Attorneys in McCarter & English’s Venture Capital & Emerging Growth Companies Group guide growth companies through the challenges of building a successful business.
Our clients span a broad spectrum of technologies, including Web and mobile, life sciences, software, energy/clean technology and healthcare services.
Our attorneys are well-versed in the issues associated with protecting intellectual property, identifying financing sources, allocating equity among founders, investors and others, establishing equity compensation and incentive arrangements, recruiting board members and otherwise putting a foundation in place for a client company’s future growth.
Our representation of early stage companies often focuses, at least initially, on the following:
creating the business using the most effective/efficient choice of legal entity
helping the founders establish fair and well-constructed agreements
transferring underlying intellectual property to the business, including negotiations with inventors, universities, and other technology owners
building compensation and incentive arrangements for current and future employees identifying, attracting, and negotiating all stages of funding— from seed-stage to public offerings, with an emphasis on friends/family, angel investor and venture capital funding—but with full knowledge of the ins-and-outs of SBIRs, STTRs, etc.
In addition, we actively help our clients—directly or through interdisciplinary teams—draw on the expertise of other groups within McCarter & English to:
- Effectively manage employment issues, including compensation and benefit plans, immigration issues, compliance matters, etc.
- Create programs to aggressively protect the company’s IP through patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, etc.
- Address all manner of day-to-day legal matters, contracts, leases, etc. and resolve day-to-day legal claims and disputes
- Assist with tax issues, as well as work with both the company and its founders to minimize taxation at all levels
- As a result of our extensive experience assisting emerging growth companies, we can advise on a variety of liquidity alternatives and exit strategies that best suit the founders and shareholders of a particular company while at the same time delivering efficient, personalized and responsive legal services. We have frequently been able to introduce our clients to funding sources. We work hard to build long term relationships with our clients and to place the resources of our Firm are at their disposal.