Petra Strickler
Founding partner
Forms companies and writes the agreements founders live under. Started the firm.
Business lawyers on Baylor Street, Austin
Companies that grow like live oaks
Wide, slow and hard to knock down. We’re four lawyers half a block from the Treaty Oak, and we do the work under the bark: forming companies, buying them, keeping them in order year by year, and handing them on.
Under the bark
What holds an oak up is the wood nobody sees
Walk past the Treaty Oak and you notice the canopy. What carries that weight through a dry summer is the heartwood: rings laid down one year at a time, long before anyone stopped to look at the tree.
A company works the same way. Customers see the sign and the storefront. What holds the company up is underneath: the agreement its owners signed, the contracts with the people it depends on, and a plan for who owns it when the founder steps back.
That’s the part we do. We set it down carefully at the start, look at it once a year, and come back to it whenever the company changes shape.
Four kinds of work
From the first ring to the acorn
Most companies need all four of these eventually, in about this order.
Choosing the ground
Forming the company: which kind of entity, who owns what, and an agreement every founder has actually read.
Forming a companyGrafting on
Buying a business someone else grew: the letter of intent, the diligence, the purchase agreement and the months after closing.
Buying a businessA ring a year
Outside general counsel for a monthly fee: contracts read before you sign, policies kept current, and a yearly look at the whole company.
Outside general counselAcorns
Succession: buy-sell agreements, a sale to your managers or your family, and a plan written years before anyone needs it.
Succession
The people who tend it
Four lawyers, each with a page of their own
Read about us before you call. The lawyer who meets you first is the one who does the work.
Gustav Prusak
Partner
Buys and sells businesses for owners, from the letter of intent to the first months after closing.
Lamia Toukan
Partner
Plans succession for owners: buy-sell agreements, sales to managers and family, and exits written years ahead.
Femi Adeyinka
Associate
Reviews contracts for the firm’s outside general counsel clients, and drafts the employee handbooks.
The firm, in brief
Rings so far
- Founded
- 2012, in a converted house on Baylor StreetHalf a block from the Treaty Oak
- Courts
- Travis County district courtsU.S. District Court, Western District of TexasTexas Business CourtWhen a company dispute can’t be settled
- Jurisdictions
- TexasLocal counsel brought in when a deal crosses a state line
- Lawyers
- FourThree partners and one associate
- First meeting
- An hour, at no chargeAt the office or by video
- Fees
- Flat for formation and outside counselHourly for deals, with a written estimate first