What we do
We focus on representing businesses, business-owners, investment funds and non-profits on the legal issues that relate to the formation, operation, growth and sale of their businesses.
If you are starting up a business, fund or non-profit, hiring or firing employees, negotiating contracts, raising capital to make it grow, building a plant, buying other companies, selling your company or need to set up your estate to take care of the next generation, we are here for you and we want to help.
About Avisen – Entrepreneurial Law Firm
How we do it
We average over 20 years of experience per attorney, so we have seen and done most things. We use our experience to achieve your goals effectively and efficiently. We also leverage the same technologies used by larger law firms to prepare documents and research the law.
When needed, we partner with other high quality law firms, either in specific practice areas (even equine law if needed) or locations to get you the results you need. We answer our own phones and respond to our own emails. We add paper to the printer. We do what it takes to serve you.
Why we do it
At Avisen Legal, we are passionate about what we do. We take pride and joy in seeing our clients succeed. We also take pride and joy in helping each other succeed. We believe this makes us better lawyers and that means better results for you.
We believe that this is what sets us apart from other law firms – we are not just a group of lawyers providing legal services, we are a team that is dedicated to helping each other grow and succeed. When our team members are able to grow and develop in their roles, they are better able to provide high-quality legal services to our clients. By fostering a culture of collaboration, we are able to tap into the diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives of our team members, which allows us to provide comprehensive and effective solutions to our clients. Ultimately, our goal is to be more than just a legal service provider – we want to be a trusted advisor and partner to our clients, and we believe that our commitment to helping each other succeed is a key part of that.
We are entrepreneurs. We manage our own business, just like you. We understand both the passion and pain of owning and running a business. We know what it takes to build something from the ground up, and we know how important it is to have a team of advisors and supporters who can help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with entrepreneurship. e know what it takes to build something from the ground up, and we know how important it is to have a team of advisors and supporters who can help you navigate the challenges and opportunities that come with entrepreneurship.
Contact Avisen
How It Began
Our lawyers joined together based on a shared belief in an entrepreneurial law firm. Some left large law firms and some came from in-house general counsel backgrounds. Everyone provides clients with the high level of legal expertise they expect and the level of personal commitment they deserve.
We work on sophisticated and complex matters. Technology enables us to work effectively and efficiently together and with you. We know that highly experienced lawyers, with the right tools, provide the highest level of expertise and care without extravagant overhead.
The result was our mission – Boutique Business Law.
The Benefits of a Boutique Law Firm:
A Q&A with Avisen Legal CEO and Co-Founder Todd Taylor
There’s a lot to think about when you’re deciding who to choose for legal representation. Minnesota alone has well over 100+ law firms with countless attorneys who have experience in just about every field imaginable. Minnesota’s largest law firm has over 50 different practice areas. However, many people look for firms that focus on just the area of law in which they need assistance. Often referred to as “boutique law firms,” these law firms generally only work within one field – in Avisen Legal’s case, business law and the various practices that fall under the “business” umbrella.
Avisen Legal CEO and Co-Founder Todd Taylor took some time to answer some commonly asked questions about boutique law firms, speak about the benefits to working with a smaller team that focuses on one area of the law, and why clients trust Avisen and love the care, legal guidance, and customer service they receive.
Todd: Boutique law firms tend to really be focused on one particular area of the law with a high degree of expertise. Within that area, we earn your trust. What I think sets Avisen apart even from others in that realm is our strong culture of customer care. That’s not often talked about in the legal world. We are in the customer care business. We have clients, clients have needs and desires that they hire us for, and we have to be responsive to them and their goals. Our care focus doesn’t just start with our clients, it applies to our employees as well. That internal focus of being good to each other makes us better lawyers and better people. Who doesn’t want to work with somebody who’s a good person?
When you’re a deal lawyer, as we all are at Avisen, the job is to get things done. That requires a level of emotional understanding and empathy that people don’t talk about. Our ability to work with clients comes down to the fact that we have a better understanding of what they’re going through, because we are a small business. We’re all business owners as well, and I think that understanding is really important to be able to talk to clients about what they’re going through. That’s empathy and a culture of value. There’s value of and in each person, and we recognize that. That’s important to us.
Todd: We can provide a much greater focus on the client and their needs. Especially with us and our model of having all our lawyers being very experienced lawyers. Any time a client is talking to one of our lawyers, they’re talking to someone experienced enough to handle any of their issues.
At bigger firms, you’d hire me as a client and I’d tell you I’m on it, but then I’d go get a younger associate and they’d do 75% of the work. It’s nothing against associates; we all start there. But when you call Avisen, you’ll only be talking to someone who really has that expertise.
The other is, frankly, we can charge less because our overhead is so much smaller. At a bigger firm, even if you only need one lawyer’s expertise, you’re paying for the overhead of everyone in that office. That allows us to be a much more cost effective and efficient option for someone looking for help in the business law field. Some practices are designed to wedge between the big guys of a larger firm.
It’s not that we’re a low-cost provider; we’re not. But because of our experience and because of our expertise in business law, we can provide you with high quality business law guidance more efficiently than a large firm can. That’s where you can start to see the financial benefit of working with us. It’s not our hourly rate, necessarily, but I keep coming back to customer service. You think of those brands that are known for their high level of customer service and they aren’t necessarily low-cost providers. But they charge only a fair price for the service they provide. That’s us. There’s also the comfort and relief that comes with speaking with Avisen lawyers who are all confident and accomplished and fully understand both your situation and the laws surrounding it. We’re not passing your case to an associate with less experience. We’re getting your work done more efficiently because we’ve been there, we know the law, and we have the skill and experience to get the work done. So as a boutique, we can more effectively help clients achieve their goals at a better overall value for them.
Todd: Business law, at the end of the day, is about accomplishing a benefit to someone or achieving a goal. It’s about making something better, making something good out of this world. It’s legal alchemy. Litigation is, almost by necessity, a zero-sum game. The best case in litigation mediation means both sides come out unhappy, most of the time. In business law, the best-case scenario is that both sides are happy, and I think that really appeals to us. It’s certainly competitive, but everyone is working towards something, with the goal of making something good.
We’re here to help build something up, rather than tear something down. People watch TV shows and it’s always adversarial. That’s not our lives. We’re not about the fight.
Todd: I think clients get their desired results faster with Avisen. They’re talking to someone who better understands their issues because we’re business owners ourselves. We’ve been through what our clients have been through. We’ve also got, on average, 20+ years of experience of doing this. It makes our clients more comfortable to know that they have somebody that cares about them that’s along for the ride with them.
I think this can be underappreciated in the profession outside of boutiques like us. We really do care about them, and I think that translates into better legal work. It’s not just an abstract issue to us. While our jobs require us to separate ourselves enough to provide a real, unbiased analysis, at the same time, we really do care about their outcomes and their successes. We’ll work with them on challenging solutions and situations — not just write up an hour of work and then be done. They can see us in their corner and can hear the frank, honest advice we give them, and I think that’s very important.
Todd: Over the years we’ve all practiced, we’ve built relationships with lawyers from all different practices. Once we get an idea of what a client is looking for or might need that’s outside of what we provide, we can help them make connections, make the phone calls, to find and vet the lawyer that they need. Another benefit to being a boutique, we’re not captive to other lawyers in a big firm. If you’re with a big firm, there may be people outside that firm who may be best suited to handle your specific needs for a variety of reasons, but the firm suggests someone in-house because it’s better for the firm. Since we don’t have that, we’re able to partner with and refer clients to the exact experts they need for situations we don’t deal with without the economic pressure to keep that business within the firm.
Todd: We’ve talked a lot about customer service, and I think clients like the fact that they can come to us as a trusted legal resource and get a good answer.
Second behind that is responsiveness. It doesn’t always mean we have the answer right away, but we’ll get back to you. We push back against that idea that, in order to take a call with your client, you have to have the answer right away. We’re honest and if we don’t know it confidentially now, we’ll tell you we’ll get back to you by the end of the day. But then we do that research and we do get back to you by the end of the day. We refuse to leave our customers hanging or waiting for an answer for a long time. Again, it’s all about customer service. That ethos makes Avisen kind of unique.
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