Retail

At Hinshaw, we provide customized solutions to retailers. We handle the legal aspects of these clients’ business activities, anticipate legal challenges and provide representation in disputes. With attorneys particularly skilled in assisting retail enterprises, and a full-service practice to back them up, we provide the value-added counsel that retail businesses require.

Business and Commercial Transactions
We help our retail clients thrive by assisting with activities ranging from business organization and corporate governance to financing and joint ventures. We have helped retailers manage and capitalize upon opportunities presented by:

• Bankruptcy, reorganizations and workouts
• Contract negotiation and structuring
• Franchising and licensing
• Insurance selection and policy structuring
• Mergers, acquisitions and other alliances
• Regulatory compliance
• Securities-related activities

Intellectual Property and Technology
We understand that effective branding and streamlining are keys to success in the retail industry. So we provide tailored legal advice, counsel and representation that effectively addresses issues such as:

• Channel management efficiency
• Hardware purchases
• Privacy concerns
• Registration and protection of copyrights, domain names and trademarks
• Software licensing
• Starting and managing e-commerce activities
• Trademark registration and protection

Labor and Employment
Retail is a business in which effective person-to-person contact and administration and management is essential to success. Employment and labor policies that both protect the retailer and contribute to employee satisfaction consequently have powerful effects. At Hinshaw, we help retail employers with:

• Drafting and revising employee benefits plans
• Drafting employee handbooks
• Employers’ liability claims
• Employment discrimination claims
• Immigration subjects
• Labor relations and collective bargaining
• Risk management policies, tools and training
• Strikes and unfair labor practice charges
• Wage and hour matters

Litigation
Because of the tight margins retailers are subject to, even minor litigation can have profound bottom line implications. Capitalizing upon our broad experience representing retail enterprises in disputes and our multi-disciplinary, national practice, we help our retail clients put to rest claims involving:

• Breach of contract
• Catastrophic injury
• Employment laws
• Local ordinance
• Premises liability
• Products liability
• Unfair business practices
• Wrongful arrest

We maintain one of the largest litigation groups in the United States and have a reputation of resolving disputes to our client’s benefit, both by settlement and in the courtroom. But a litigation victory that comes at an extraordinarily high cost can be just as harmful as a defeat. So, where arbitration, mediation or other alternatives the courtroom will lead to a better result for our client, we aggressively pursue that avenue.

Real Estate
Notwithstanding the increasing numbers and importance of online sales, brick and mortar operations are essential to most retailers’ businesses. Our construction, corporate, environmental and real estate attorneys, assisted as necessary by other lawyers in the firm, represent retail clients in the full gamut of real estate activities. Specifically, we help with:

• Acquisitions and dispositions, such as sale of shopping centers
• Air, ground, and water contamination, as well as all other environmental concerns
• Annexations, land use and zoning
• Commercial lending and financing
• Leasing transactions
• Site development and redevelopment