Due Process Practice…

Entrepreneurship can be a contact sport.  Changes wrought by entrepreneurs disrupt established interests.  Many a promising young venture finds itself ensnared by contradictory and confusing state-by-state regulation.  Due process protection is a powerful tool for leveling such playing fields.

Capital formation is an especially topical example.

Paradoxically, the type of funding on which ventures most depend is the one that attorneys and accountants are least able to offer guidance.   Exempt offerings, a much disputed subset of “Blue Sky Laws,” are a neglected stepchild at most law firms and accounting firms.

Without institutional backing, and associated protection of a professional compliance department, seed stage companies can be at the mercy of state level enforcement that is often capricious, occasionally self serving, and sometimes worse.  Raising capital is difficult:  with an overhanging subpoena, almost impossible.  Further, a prior regulatory ding may scare off certain “White Shoe” bankers when the time is right for an institutional raise.