FORWARD-THINKING LEGAL SERVICE, BENDING-OVER-BACKWARD WORK ETHIC.

Being nickeled and dimed by boring firms with the same tired solutions is so 2002. We’d much rather focus our energy creating cutting-edge, cost-effective, customized strategies for your legal issues.

Our lawyers are trailblazing the innovative approaches and new technologies that are changing the marketplace as we speak. They are experts across a wide array of practice areas and industries, covered in the robust-yet-handy list below:

Accounts Receivable Management

From creditors to debt buyers to servicers of all shapes and sizes, Actuate has both breadth and depth in the ARM industry. From defending routine FDCPA matters to the design of sophisticated compliance management systems, our lawyers work counsel banks, non-bank creditors, debt buying companies, collection agencies, debt collection law firms, skip tracers, as well as technology providers and other servicers to the ARM industry. A staple at industry events, our lawyers present, attend and write for audiences at both RMAi and ACA.

Litigation / Dispute Offerings

Data Law

We know tech, we use tech, we build tech. Heck, we live, sleep, and breathe tech! So it comes as little surprise that our firm has a very robust practice in the technology space. But E-discovery, Information Governance, Data Security & Privacy, Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Vehicles, Drones, etc., etc., just didn’t fit very well on a business card. So, we chose to call it the “Data Law Practice.” That title concisely yet comprehensively conveys a mastery of all things that currently lurk at the intersection of law and technology and yet is flexible enough to include those challenges and opportunities that are yet to come.

Just about all information created today is in digital form. As the types, volumes, and mobility of data continue to grow at exponential rates, so do the challenges of securing that data, complying with ever-evolving regulatory requirements, effectively implementing information management practices and protocols, and responsibly and cost-effectively handling electronically stored information (ESI) in litigations and investigations. But never fear! Our Data Law Practice is piloted by nationally-recognized partners with decades of combined e-discovery, information governance, and data security and privacy experience, as well as leadership roles in organizations such as the Sedona Conference, the Electronic Discovery Institute, ACEDS, and the Seventh Circuit Council on eDiscovery and Digital Information. The team includes attorneys who are first-chair trial lawyers, Chambers Global-ranked, CIPP-certified, and unquestionably adept in the use of cutting-edge data analytics tools. In short, we’re dually proficient in both law and in technology! In this regard, our Data Law attorneys understand not only our client’s legal obligations, but also the electronic systems that create and store ESI that are key to the ability to protect, govern, retrieve, search, and review that data efficiently, securely, and defensibly, on time, and on budget.

Data Privacy

Corporate Services

Actuate’s team works with businesses large and small on both everyday and complex corporate matters that affect you and your organization(s). From entity formation, registration and restructuring, to acquisitions and sales of businesses, our team helps you take a holistic view of whatever project is in front of you.

Need help with some due diligence? We also have niche expertise that can assist with IP, regulatory compliance, data privacy and security, as well as due diligence around a litigation portfolio.

Cannabis

The cannabis industry continues to mature. The barrier to enter this burgeoning market is high, particularly as markets begin to open state by state. Each state has various rules and regulations to decipher. The industry still carries risk and challenges with conflicting federal laws, challenges to obtain banking relationships and financing opportunities, and payment processing headaches. And that's all before you get to growing, marketing, labeling, selling, and transporting your products.

The lawyers at Actuate are no strangers to highly regulated industry. Leveraging our regulatory expertise, Actuate counsels cannabis clients in the following areas:

Actuate loves representing entrepreneurs. We handle matters both thoroughly and efficiently. And certainly love getting into the weeds with our clients. (Sorry, we had to…)

Counsel Areas:

Licensing Applications

Corporate (Formation, Structuring and Investment)
Labels and Disclosures
Compliance Counseling (including design and implementation of compliance management systems)
Drafting Policies & Procedures
Regulatory Advocacy
Intellectual Property Issues (trademark, copyrights, and patent litigation)
Data Privacy and Security
Information Governance

Fintech

Fintech is disrupting the way financial service companies engage with their customers. The lawyers at Actuate are leaders in the field. We write about Fintech. We podcast about Fintech. We advocate for Fintech. With so many facets to this growing market, the team at Actuate is working with companies large and small on developing, implementing, and investing in cutting edge technology in the following areas:

Payments & Billing
Electronic and Mobile Banking
Retail & Consumer Banking
Money Transfers & Remittances
Gift Cards and other Branded Currency
Online and Alternative Lending
Blockchain & Digital Currencies
Artificial Intelligence
Regtech
Privacy and Security

We Can Help You Innovate

Bottom line. We understand your sector. And we know what it means to take an old model and break it to create something better. That mindset is the foundation of our Firm and why we launched in 2018. We love innovating so much, we launched our own RegTech subsidiary, quointec, to help clients manage complex multi-jurisdictional problems.

Creating new products and services is difficult enough. Now let’s pile on the increasing and ever-changing regulatory landscape, disclosures and procedure required. We work alongside our clients to develop strategies for responsible innovation - creating new products within regulatory requirements. Whether we are analyzing issues related to federal pre-emption, data privacy, money transmission, alternative lending models, or ethical artificial intelligence, we help our clients get their products and services to market.

Regulatory Compliance Counseling

Actuate Law is also a proud sponsor of FINTEX, the non-profit trade association fueling innovation in financial services and act as FINTEX outside general counsel.

Intellectual Property

IP Disputes

Actuate Law helps clients navigate the increasingly complicated landscape of IP disputes. We approach every dispute with a business mindset, helping our clients balance the risks and rewards of litigation. To the extent our clients end up in court, our IP litigation team is adept at handling high-stakes disputes before US federal district and appellate courts, the International Trade Commission, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and other tribunals. Our lawyers have handled trials and hearings involving patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, with technical experience ranging from medical devices to automotive technology. In every matter, we relentlessly advocate for our clients and help them achieve great results.

IP Counseling and Transactions

Actuate Law attorneys know that IP can be a critical component of any business transaction. Our attorneys help clients create strong and flexible IP portfolios that support their business strategies as they change and grow. We also guide clients to identify and follow pathways to market that mitigate risk from competitor intellectual property. Actuate lawyers stay by our clients’ sides through all stages of commercial transactions, whether they are considering the purchase, sale, or licensing of a product line or entire business. From the negotiating table to closing, our attorneys combine knowledge and experience with IP to help clients achieve their business goals.

Labor & Employment Litigation and Legal Counseling

Actuate Law’s team members, led by Founding Partner Doug Albritton, provide ongoing employment law counseling and litigation services to companies throughout the United States. We help ensure employers maintain compliance with federal laws such as Title VII, the FLSA (Fair Labor Standard Act), the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), the ADEA (Age Discrimination in Employment Act), the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act), as well as related state and local statutes and regulations. We occasionally represent employees in such matters, most often in helping senior-level personnel negotiate separation agreements. We also have substantial restrictive covenants and trade secrets practice.

As a boutique law firm without the overhead and conflicts that large law firms are encumbered with, we are able to provide quick and practical advice on matters of all sizes, and for those matters that cannot be resolved, our seasoned attorneys, with significant courtroom experience across a variety of practices, can cost-effectively litigate them through trial if necessary and have done so many times. Of course, we are used to working with our client’s insurance carriers when they have coverage for these types of cases.

Common Employment Engagements

Termination/Separation Process

The most common area we consult on is how to terminate a particular employee’s employment, from documenting cause issues if such matters are presented, to how to conduct the termination process, and then resolving the separation pursuant to a separation agreement. We also have handled numerous Title VII (gender and race) and ADEA complaints, consulted on ADA matters, prosecuted and defended employee breach of fiduciary duty claims (such as property theft and customer diversion), assisted numerous executives in negotiating separation agreements

Crisis Terminations

Finally, we have experience with “crisis” terminations, where a client, which usually has been a parent company, has had to terminate numerous employees of a subsidiary because of some significant concern. In those cases we wear many hats, often overseeing third-party security companies to provide physical location and electronic security services in the days before and after the process, counseling on obligations that may be set forth in employment and shareholder agreements (including related corporate and board of director steps), reviewing contracts to change signature authority (such as in leases and bank agreements), and then in counseling parent personnel through the termination process and the final documenting of more complex separation agreements often entailing equity repurchases and the formation of litigation escrows to fund litigation, if any, arising from the terminated employees’ conduct at issue.

Litigation & Dispute Resolution

Actuate has a deep and experienced bench of trial lawyers ready to handle disputes large and small. From simple mediation to complex commercial cases and class action defense, our team of litigators are ready to assist. In addition to the traditional representation that goes along with litigation, Actuate actively leverages technology and other tools to create as many efficiencies as possible in the discovery process. With some the nation’s leading e-discovery attorneys (led by Chamber’s ranked founding Partner Martin Tully, Actuate embraces the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive coding at all stages of investigation and litigation.

Consumer Class Actions

Commercial Real Estate Litigation

It has been our experience that significant commercial real-estate disputes are litigated further, and go to trial more often, than other commercial disputes. Doug Albritton, who leads this practice for Actuate Law, has tried five real-estate cases to verdict, and successfully defended wins from two of those cases on appeal through the appellate courts and up to denials of Petitions for Leave to Appeal that opposing parties filed with the Illinois Supreme Court. These cases include a contested seven-figure parking easement, successful prosecution of a claim arising out of an undisclosed flooding defect, enforcement of an oral agreement where the buyer undertook improvements to the property before the final purchase documents were signed, a seven-figure eminent domain jury trial and a contested radius restriction.

In addition to these trials, we have handled many matters that have settled short of trial, including disputes about lease terms, landlord failures to timely complete leased premises build outs, easements, adjacent property actions including encroaching construction and threats to shared walls, build-out expenses, and securing lease payments including from parent companies where veil-piercing permits the landlord to disregard the corporate form with corporate tenants where corporate formalities have not been respected.

Because real-estate is one of those “unique” interests that the law recognizes, early consultation with counsel is always advised because money damages often are not an adequate measure of damage, and courts, more often than in other disputes, can order real-estate transactions rescinded, and/or improvements made to a disputed parcel removed at the improving party’s expense in order to return the other party to a prior position.

Restrictive Covenant and Trade Secret Litigation

Restrictive covenants are a matter of contract, arise from employment and sale-of-business agreements, including employee stock plans and separation agreements, and generally refer to a variety of restraints including non-competes (an activity restriction), employee and customer non-solicits (which sometimes include “non-acceptance” or “no work” restrictions), customer “buy-back” terms (which may require an employee to “pay” a scheduled fee for work obtained from current or past customers), no-hire agreements (most often in staffing contracts, and preclude the hiring of staffing-company personnel), and confidentiality obligations which generally extend to “confidential information” and “trade secrets.” Such covenants with employees are enforced to one degree or another in 49 states (only California is otherwise), and in all 50 states in connection with the purchase or sale of a business. The “right to work” concept has no application to these issues.

Enforceability presents a state-law issue, the outcome of which varies state-by-state, sometimes varies depending upon which state intermediate appellate jurisdiction the case is subject to (e.g., Cook County), sometimes results in a different answer depending upon whether the case is in state or federal court (because federal courts are not bound to follow intermediate state-court appellate opinions) and, of course, is most strongly dependent upon the particular language used in the agreement (and sometimes there is more than one agreement). With the relatively new federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, or DTSA, there is now a growing body of federal law overlapping, in part, with state trade-secret law.

Given the above, and dozens of other issues too long to list in this summary, but which we deal with regularly, it should be apparent that these matters demand counsel with a broad range of counseling and litigation experience, including familiarity and tried know-how with the demands of emergency and expedited litigation or arbitration, because when litigated these cases start and finish over the matter of a few days, weeks or months, often racing through temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction hearings with parallel expedited discovery encompassing both fact and expert witnesses. Indeed, we often are called upon to prepare offensive and defensive pleadings in a few or days or less.

These matters also require counsel familiar with Electronically Stored Information (or ESI), including the ability to work with and against computer forensic experts who are more and more often hired in these matters to explore computer activity, including whether information has been copied or otherwise taken. Often, we are hired to demonstrate that such has not occurred, or to demonstrate the inconsequential effect of any challenged activity. We have extensive experience working with and against such experts, including contested court proceedings with such witnesses called to the stand. And, our general e-discovery practice enables us to remain on top of the latest ESI investigation, collection and review techniques, and the fast-changing forms in which people exchange such information including through e-mail, texts, other communication platforms and social media accounts. We have collected and reviewed information from all of them.

The single most important piece of advice we can share here is this: if there is a restrictive covenant or trade secret question, please reach out to counsel to ask. That is because the overwhelming majority of these matters resolve without litigation, after the exchange of early correspondence and negotiation conducted with the advice of counsel so that the pros, cons and business risks at hand can be assessed and balanced to reach the best outcome for you. If you do not reach out to counsel, you may act with a mistaken belief about the enforceability of the agreement at issue (maybe it is, maybe it is not), a misunderstanding of how trade-secret law interacts with these decisions even in the absence of a restrictive covenant, and, even worse, may undertake an ill-advised course of action that may prompt a lawsuit where none was otherwise in the making.

Regulatory & Compliance

With a focus on financial services, FinTech and RegTech, data privacy and security, and cannabis, Actuate’s lawyers offer a diverse skill set to guide clients from various markets through today’s ever-shifting regulatory landscapes.

We counsel cutting-edge startups that seek to disrupt markets without disrupting regulators and the investors looking to deploy capital. We also assist well-established players by modernizing their compliance management systems and bringing their data and privacy policies and procedures current. Or, if you simply need day-to-day or isolated compliance advice, we are happy to help with that too.

While we always prefer to proactively help clients avoid regulatory mishaps and disputes, we also defend and guide companies through preparing responses to regulatory inquiries, subpoenas, enforcement actions, and lawsuits. So, when you have an approaching deal, transition, or audit on the horizon, please call us first. But, if you didn’t, we’ll be here for you after too, no matter how large or small the problem. Our lawyers have vast experience in defending government actions, private class actions, and white-collar claims.

Financial Services and Receivables Management

We represent clients, large and small, from all facets of the financial services industry – card issuers, lenders, retailers, finance companies, debt buyers, debt collectors, service providers, payment processors, fintech operations, startups, and investors. Actuate lawyers provide guidance and counsel through all life cycles of money, from origination to lending, charge off, acquisition, and collection.

Whether your organization is seeking to acquire or make an investment in a business or product in this space, acquire a new debt portfolio, renew or obtain licensing, or is facing an audit or examination from the CFPB, state regulatory department, or a portfolio seller, Actuate has you covered. We regularly work with clients to assist with due diligence, prepare responses to RFPs, negotiate, prepare and revise purchase or servicing agreements, vendor contracts, and operating documents, prepare for audits and/or respond to government inquiries and examination findings, build, modernize and implement compliance management systems, and create policies and procedures designed to protect sensitive data.

Private Client Services / Trusts & Estates

Today’s family businesses and family offices are increasingly involved in more complex environments from regulatory matters to tax matters to international affiliations. The attorneys at Actuate help family businesses, high net worth individuals and family offices navigate through all of these complexities. We provide sophisticated tax planning advice including income, gift and estate tax mitigation strategies. We assist clients in reaching their goals by structuring corporate entities globally for investment and business purposes. As practitioners, we are tirelessly reviewing novel strategies and developing tools for clients to allow them to achieve less friction in their overall business.

Estate and Family Wealth Planning

One key element of our practice is consulting with high net worth clients on how their wealth should pass down through the generations. These considerations are completely separate from estate tax minimization and focus on the goals and objectives of the family with the use of the wealth created by the family enterprise. We have found that families are, more than ever before, focused on how the wealth will be used and what good can be done.

All of this is done within the framework of the Estate Plan – a series of trusts and wills with accompanying powers of attorney for each family member. Each document addresses the specific needs of the family. All completely customized to each circumstance families find themselves facing. The documents we create are necessarily flexible to last generations, but focused to achieve the wealth design established by the matriarch and patriarch of the family.

Risk Management / Captive Insurance

We provide risk management strategies to hopefully reduce and properly fund risk – even risk that businesses were previously self-insuring. Using properly designed captive insurance structures and premium financing, clients can leverage their own mitigation strategies to achieve safer workplaces in a tax-efficient manner and not have to worry that an unanticipated, uninsured, or underinsured risk will collapse the business. There are many risks which a business owner takes on for which commercial coverage is either too expensive or not worth the cost given the actual coverage provided. Moreover, if there are no claims in a given year then the cost is a sunken cost to the family. This tool can provide an incentive for the business to insure risks that it is not currently insuring because the business owners can retain any profit from the premiums – they are not just lost to the commercial insurance marketplace.

831(b) captives – or so-called Micro-Captives

The IRS is aggressively pursuing these captives. They have listed this strategy on the dirty dozen list for a number of years and have made the strategy a “transaction of interest” which requires the filing of various forms to indicate that a business is utilizing the strategy to reduce its income. Actuate attorneys are defending clients under IRS audit that have utilized this strategy. We strongly encourage all participants in captive structures making the 831(b) election to have their structure reviewed by tax counsel to ensure compliance with the rules as we know them. In particular, the IRS has litigated a number of captives that were involved in risk pools and has won a few cases to date. The design of the risk pool is one of the things that courts have looked at (among other aspects of the program) to determine that the captive insurance program was not properly designed and therefore the purported benefit of the captive from a tax perspective was not achieved.

The IRS admits that these programs are legitimate programs when designed correctly. At Actuate, we advise clients on whether their captive program qualifies to make the 831(b) election based on the guidance and rules as we know them to date. As IRS pronouncements and precedent is set with the courts, we review structures with clients to determine if any changes are necessary to continue to qualify for insurance tax treatment.

ONE MORE THING:

If you’re looking for the proof in our pudding, we’re so obsessed with technology that we started a subsidiary of our law firm—quointec— to build automated solutions for our clients' legal and compliance problems. Will it make lawyers obsolete? We like our odds.