Family Business and Entrepreneurs
Family businesses are different. They face more tough challenges than other businesses. And they offer wonderful benefits as well, both financial and emotional.
Beyond the challenges inherent in running any sophisticated company, family-owned businesses have an additional layer of complexity. There are complicated family relationships that must be considered, understood, and nurtured; kinships that strengthen many businesses and destroy others. The most successful family businesses understand these nuances and utilize the resources of professionals who understand them just as intimately.
Gould & Ratner is unique too – in its understanding of this subtle dynamic. Our firm was created over 60 years ago to service the legal and business needs of one of Chicago's most prominent families. Today, we continue to represent this family's multi-billion-dollar interests around the world. In the intervening decades, we expanded our fierce dedication to the sophisticated and subtle services family businesses require, representing over 800 other prominent family businesses and entrepreneurial institutions.
Gould & Ratner's Family Business Group is one of the legal profession's largest practices devoted to family businesses. We have many lawyers, with decades of experience, who counsel and advise family businesses and understand their unique complexities.
Every day, we bring our experience in solving hundreds of similar Family Business Group problems to each new matter. The legal services we provide to family businesses are as unique and varied as their needs, from corporate, estate planning, and tax and financial services, to litigation and real estate.
We have been fortunate to represent several families, with net worths in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, through three or four generations. These prominent families have interests in a wide range of industries including high-tech, telecommunications, movie theaters, commodity mining, distribution of various products, truck trailer manufacturers, furniture manufacturers and a variety of services.
The legal profession is full of talented attorneys who can perform routine legal work. However, it is unusual to find a lawyer who can anticipate the complex needs of a fourth-generation business, having handled the issue for countless previous family members. We can help first-generation family businesses anticipate and avoid the problems of successfully transferring the business to future generations while preserving their flexibility.
Unlike some firms, our lawyers do not concentrate solely in narrow specialty areas; we feel it creates tunnel-visioned lawyers who miss the big picture. G&R lawyers are "cross-trained" in different legal disciplines to open them to more options and solutions to our clients' situations. Our historic tradition as a family-business law firm means we educate our people to wear many different hats simultaneously, from lawyer to family counselor. All in a day's work for a G&R lawyer.
The Gould & Ratner Family Business Group serves the unique needs and demands of family businesses in all of their forms. The businesses can be owned by a single generation or many families across multiple generations. Others are owned by families and managed by non-family members, or even publicly traded companies owned in part by a founding family. Each has unique characteristics and complex issues to be understood and addressed.Furthermore, our leadership in two global legal networks, LawExchange International and Law Firm of the Americas, has helped us build close relationships with high-quality lawyers throughout North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America. This organization ensures that our clients' needs are satisfied seemlessly worldwide.
You can hire a lawyer for your family business.
Or you can hire a family business lawyer.
Gould & Ratner.
Because family businesses are different.
News
Publications
- A Lawyer's Guide to Forming, Financing, Operating and Growing a Business