Professional Experience

The law office of Stephen Katz focuses on restaurant law, new and growing businesses, real estate, and estate planning. Steve understands the issues faced every day, both by businesses from start-up, through operations, to exit strategies and individuals involved with real estate or estate planning needs.
For more than two decades, Steve has worked alongside his clients to enhance their opportunities and develop creative solutions to challenges they face, including the purchase and sale of businesses and business interests; raising debt and equity capital; negotiating and drafting contracts; analyzing leases; protecting confidential and proprietary information; creating and enforcing non-competition agreements; forming business entities; hiring and terminating employees; and dispute resolution.

Diverse Client Base

We have represented a variety of clients. A partial list includes:

• Manufacturers and Suppliers (high tech companies, electronics, retail clothing manufacturers, import/export businesses, forest wood products)
• Professional Services (doctors, dentists, architects, insurance agents, scientists, authors, travel agents, employment agencies)
• Real Estate (developers, investors, real estate agents, property management)
• Retail and Service Industries (auto repair, custom framing shops, grocery stores, consulting/marketing firms, heating/insulation contractors, flooring services, franchisees of national chains, bookstores, roofing contractors)

Representative Matters

• Multiple transactions representing buyers in the acquisition of several well-known restaurants in the greater Seattle area
• Represented the seller of a film editing and digital archival studio in the sale of its assets and in negotiating ongoing consulting agreements to Deluxe Entertainment, a subsidiary of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., the leading provider of a broad range of entertainment industry services and technologies to major Hollywood Studios and an international client base in eight countries
• Represented a local buyer in the food research, testing, and agricultural industry in the negotiations and purchase of five research laboratories throughout the United States in a $3.5 million transaction from Swift & Company, an American food processor and subsidiary of the world’s largest processor of meat products, with more than $30 billion in annual sales
• Adviser to several clients who are majority shareholders of a business in the purchase of minority shareholder interests in various industries such as a retail auto parts chain, nursing home operator, and metal finisher contractor
• Represented various retail store operators in lease negotiations at major Seattle-area shopping malls
• Counsel to the business interests of a Seattle-area glass installation firm expanding its locations throughout Oregon, California, Arizona, and Colorado
• Represented the seller in the sale of a nationwide seminar/education business to principal employee
• Represented the seller of a local grocery market to the shareholder of a 33-store East Coast supermarket chain

Business Formation »