‶Our job is to create a strong legal foundation that will support uninhibited growth for our clients’ businesses. We have a client who owned a number of franchises here and there, and over time, his curiosity and ambition had outgrown his team. But you can’t keep building on a shaky legal foundation or you’ll run into trouble. So we did a corporate hygiene check, updated some entities, changed others, got everything in order, and now he owns dozens of franchises in multiple states and it’s all running seamlessly.″
– Phil Tortorich, Founder | TORCH LAW
Bring us your most complex privately held business – the one with legal, financial and often family implications – that’s our sweet spot.
How do we help our Corporate Structuring & Business Succession clients?
We’ll let one of them tell you.
‶I have always wanted somebody who would outlive me by a lot who could help my wife and family with our estate. And to have this young brilliant guy who knows our family well, Phil and I have leveraged our relationship with a philosophy to help my entire family. I rely very heavily on him.
Not only is Phil brilliant, he’s personable, and he’s a family guy, devoted to his daughter. He understood us, our values, what our concerns were, and we always felt so comfortable with his work because he was at the cutting edge of proper legal techniques and estate plans and so goddamn smart, I couldn’t even take notes! I’d be like, Phil! Slow down!
Phil’s been involved in our business for years because of stock ownership, property, all these moving pieces. This tax planning and estate planning and trusts and wills, it’s complex. And all the gymnastics and the hoops you have to go through to get to that, it’s really very complex. And how he keeps all this s**t straight is beyond me! Some of the documents are 25 pages thick! But the strategy and the thinking and the concepts that he’s brought to us are perfect. And he gets it, he understands our desires, what we’re trying to accomplish, but he also gets the complexity.
We have a great sense of core values in our company including being fair and equitable on a monetary basis. And I don’t want the kids or my wife to have problems down the road and that’s the part that keeps you up at night. I have 4 kids; 3 in the business, and one with a business of her own. They’ve all benefited from our success and Phil figured out how to make all of them ok with how we distribute the estate. So three of my kids have control of the business and they’ll be the beneficiaries of it. As far as my daughter’s concerned, we set her up with a nest egg that we’ve invested. And whatever’s left, we’re going to divide between our 4 children and 12 grandchildren.
We don’t think of him as a lawyer – we think of him as the very critical component of a highly trusted advisor. We’ve relied on him to guide us – personal, professional, estate planning and succession – and he has far exceeded expectations by all means, always giving us what we felt was the very best advice. He’s brilliant. Unbelievable capacity.
I know we’re not his only clients and he has clients all over the country with estates much more significant than ours, but his capacity to retain everything about our needs is overwhelming to me. There are very few people that have that kind of intellect and capacity and ability to do this. There’s a lot of creativity involved. His law practice is an art, not a science. This is not book learning so to speak. He’s one smart son of a gun. His capacity to keep it all straight, it’s breathtaking.″
– JK
The objective of Corporate Structuring is to set a company up to thrive in the present as well as in the future. Determining the best legal structure for a business takes many factors into account to identify the most advantageous fit for our clients. And since business is anything but static, even a great fit needs to shift and occasionally restructure over time due to an innumerable number of internal and external events. We’re on it.
Compliance is a huge part of how we keep our clients’ businesses healthy. The regulatory landscape is in constant flux requiring ongoing attention, not just quarterly review. We stay on top of it so you don’t have to.
Business Succession is where legal precision meets long-term vision. We take a hands-on approach. We help clients encourage leadership development and contingency planning, and identify and prepare successors. And we assess whether the business’ current structure or entity type will support the client’s succession goals, and consider strategies to minimize future tax exposure.
When ownership of family enterprises consists of a myriad of trusts, we carry out a corporate hygiene check, and strategize how best to smoothly incorporate the trusts and their advisors in a cohesive manner to address entity level decision-making – which is not to be confused with operational decision-making. Every entity has its hierarchy of authority and governance. Knowing what belongs in which bucket is an essential component of a successful succession.
