Silicon Valley Business Lawyers

Our Business and Corporate Attorneys

Grellas Shah LLP is a Silicon Valley business and corporate law firm with a specialty in early-stage tech startups.

Since 1984, our attorneys have helped many small to mid-sized businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and executives throughout California – several thousand in all.

We are experienced: nearly every business and corporate lawyer in our law firm has at least 10 years' experience as a practicing attorney in California.

Our attorneys represent entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and owners - and the companies they lead - as well as individuals dealing with such companies. We do not represent VCs.

Our three major practice areas consist of startup business law, small business law, and commercial litigation.

Startup Business Lawyers

Our startup business law practice occupies a unique niche in Silicon Valley. For over two decades, our law firm has represented early-stage startup business clients that sought to bypass the one-size-fits-all representation of the large law firms. Our focus has always been on founders, not VCs, and we have long been what many regard as the law firm of choice for founders in the Valley. We respect VCs but we do not represent them or hold interests in them that can potentially conflict with those of our client companies.

Our attorneys have in-depth experience in dealing with startup business issues at formation - founder arrangements , company setup timing issues, equity incentives, restricted stock grants, and securities law compliance, among others (including the Delaware question, cheap stock and capitalization questions, work-for-hire issues, and 83(b) election issues) – and with the intellectual property or IP issues that are often critical to a typical startup business in the technology field. We handle not only the corporate and IP but also the business tax aspects of all such issues, including the corporate and strategic advice that will guide your startup through the legal complexities of an early-stage business. Our lawyers likewise have taken many early-stage startups through preferred stock and other funding rounds with bridge investors, strategic investors, angel investors and VCs and have carried many of them right through to acquisition.

Our intellectual property expertise is strong and embraces the full range of arrangements for IP protection, IP licensing, and IP development, including trademark, copyright, and trade secret matters, as well as distribution, OEM, VAR, dealer, E-commerce and Internet issues, and strategic alliances.

Many lawyers today claim to be specialists in startup business law. Our lawyers have the lengthy track record and the client base to prove it.

Small Business Lawyers

Our roots lie and remain with small business owners even as we have come to specialize in early-stage startup business law.

Our small business legal services include: forming business entities, such as a corporation or LLC; selling or merging business entities, such as an asset or stock sale; handling corporate work of all kinds and advising on corporate maintenance; drafting, reviewing, and advising on contracts of all kinds, including commercial leases and standard terms; employment and contractor issues and counseling; trademark and other intellectual property matters; Internet law; and commercial deals of all kinds.

In small business matters, we do everything from spot projects to acting as outside general legal counsel for our clients. We handle the full range of small business legal matters, however large or small.

Commercial Litigation Lawyers

Our commercial litigation practice is broad and varied and includes all areas of law in which we represent startup and small business clients.

In the lawsuit area, our attorneys handle all forms of business, corporate, and partnership litigation, all forms of contract disputes, most forms of employment litigation (mostly from the employer side), business fraud, unfair competition, trade libel, UCC lawsuits, trademark and copyright infringement and intellectual property litigation generally, trade secret disputes of every type, IP licensing disputes, injunctions, writs of attachment, lease and other commercial property disputes, partner and shareholder fights, corporate, partnership and LLC dissolution lawsuits, mediation, arbitration, California commercial litigation generally, whether in state or federal courts.

In disputes and lawsuits, our litigation philosophy is one of fighting hard while aiming for practical results for our business clients.

FAQs and Startup Law 101 Series (Tutorials for Founders and Entrepreneurs)

Don't forget to check out our FAQ - Small Business and our FAQ - Startup Business sections - these contain information that should be genuinely helpful to you, including tips and tutorials for founders and entrepreneurs as featured under our Startup Law 101 Series. Newly added to the Series will be articles discussing common mistakes made by founders and how to avoid them. Among these are the problems of failing to document, misusing form contracts, misunderstanding corporate capitalization, and a host of others.

Call a Silicon Valley Business Lawyer Today

Call today for an initial consultation with one of our business and corporate attorneys.