From the latest employment law developments to insights into CBD’s legality, Fortis Law Partners has you covered in our Q3 newsletter. Learn more about our expanded Trademark Practice and other firm developments. While you are here, vote for Fortis panels on the SXSW PanelPicker. Voting ends Friday, 8/23.
SXSW PanelPicker: Vote for Fortis! Voting ends Friday, Aug. 23
Fortis has three panels featured on the SXSW Panel Picker, and we need your vote!
Julie Herzog: Maximize My Startup’s Value for Next-Phase Growth: One of the most exciting, but most challenging period in the life of a business is the growth stage. Everything changes, from the bottom line to staff size to company culture. And every decision made when planning for that next stage of growth will determine how successful it is. Julie Herzog will go over strategies for securing financing and for analyzing various M&A opportunities and exit strategies. Topics will include how to analyze transactional opportunities for future growth; how to base tax planning on future growth plans; and how to structure agreements with employees, consultants, and technology vendors to make those agreements maximally adaptable to growth. Vote here!
Henry Baskerville: The Business Pre-nup — Avoid a Bad Business Breakup: When things turn sour for a business, resulting in a hostile takeover, the firing of a founder, or a partnership ending in acrimony, the roots of the problem can often be found right back at the beginning. Founding agreements and contracts of all kinds can be forged to ensure that you don’t end up in Business Divorce Court. This session will review all the turning points of a startup that, if not deftly managed, can result in big trouble down the road. Topics will include: steps to endure a positive partnership endeavor, potential pitfalls in agreements and contracts, and which employment issues and policies need to be reviewed. Vote here!
Christine Lamb: Startup 2.0: Staffing Up: Staffing is everything when it comes to growth and success. Hiring the right people for the right jobs is just the beginning. Maintaining company morale is necessary, but not sufficient. Every company must also make sure it is protected from legal liability, that its trade secrets are kept in-house, and that problem employees don’t pose unnecessary risks. In this session, Christine Lamb will review strategies for making sure that, in this age of #metoo, strong policies and processes are in place for reporting bad behavior; considerations in creating non-compete agreements and protecting trade secrets; and approaches to ensuring that workers are designated properly as employees or independent contractors. Vote here!
In the fight for equal pay, Colorado Legislature has same goal as the U.S. women’s soccer team
Fortis Managing Partner Christine Lamb pens a byline advising Colorado companies on how to prepare for the state’s new Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, which takes effect in January 2021. Are you prepared? Read more.
Accolades
Roll Out the Barrels Food Drive: Fortis is proud to share the news that in June, it won its firm-size category in the Colorado Bar Association Roll Out the Barrels Food Drive, which benefited Metro Caring, an organization that provides for the immediate needs of food-insecure people while addressing the root causes of hunger.
Top Women-owned Business: Fortis Law Partners is listed in Colorado Business Magazine’s list of top women-owned businesses. Fortis placed at No. 62, up 13 places over 2018.
Fortis Expands Trademark Practice
Fortis Law Partners’ newly expanded Trademark practice, headed by associate Andrew Comer, offers services including Intellectual Property (IP) strategy; Trademark registrations and related filings; Trademark defense procedures; post-registration strategy; litigation for Trademark disputes; and other brand protection offerings. Comer advises companies on how to fit Trademark strategy into their overall business plans. He also helps companies with mergers and acquisitions, commercial transactions, and other corporate matters affecting their formation, financing, and operation. Read more.
Corporate Deals
With Fortis guiding it, Flatfile landed a $2.1 million round of seed funding. Flatfile imports, maps and normalizes customer data into software applications from everyday spreadsheets. Those spreadsheets are often disorganized and not created to work with a product database, but Flatfile’s Importer, installed via a simple JavaScript snippet, learns over time how data should be identified and cleaned. Customers are thus able to properly match the data to the product. Flatfile has processed more than 100 million rows of data imports for companies including ClickUp, Blackbaud, and Clientbook. Learn more by emailing Flatfile.
Fortis Law Partners continues to cement its position in the world of deal making. Over the past quarter, Fortis has advised a CBD products manufacturer in its negotiations with a major sporting-goods company to strike a multi-year, multi-million-dollar international licensing arrangement.
The firm helped several clients in the cannabis and CBD industries develop various business relationships with major companies that were looking to take advantage of rapid growth in those markets.
Fortis attorneys advised a data-management company in its $2.5 million sale to a strategic buyer, one of several such transactions over the past quarter demonstrating the firm’s deep experience in counseling technology companies at all stages of growth.
Fortis helped an engineering and consulting firm structure, negotiate and close a $2 million Series A venture round and assisted several clients in angel-investor funding rounds using SAFEs and convertible note structures and partner buyouts.
How enforceable is your non-compete clause?
Cannabis companies are served well by non-compete clauses–as long as they stay focused and don’t overreach. Managing Partner Henry Baskerville reviews the do’s and don’ts in a byline for Green Entrepreneur. Read more.
Protect your employees & your business with actionable tips in the era of #metoo
Managing Partner Christine Lamb provides HR tips that can protect your business from lawsuits in a column for Cannabis Business Executive. Read more.
Navigating the legalities of marketing CBD can be a confusing morass
CBD Today speaks with Managing Partner Henry Baskerville about how he advises his clients to stay on the right side of the myriad laws and regulations that govern how CBD products can be marketed and sold. Read more.
Baskerville to Speak on CBD Legalities
Fortis Law Partners’ Henry Baskerville will speak about the legal issues surrounding CBD during a panel discussion at CBD Expo Mountain on Saturday, October 12 at 11:15 a.m. The panel talk, “It’s Legal, Or Is It? – A Look at The Legalities of CBD,” will cover the still-murky world of CBD law and regulation, which even experts can sometimes find confusing. Grandmas are still being arrested at airports for possessing purely legal CBD products, while legal tinctures and truckloads of hemp are being confiscated by highway patrols. Clearly, both the public and the powers that be still need educating on the matter. CBD Expo Mountain will be held at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, 650 15th St., Denver, Colo. 80202
