General Practice Blog

This post discusses Texas law. Alternative dispute resolution, or ADR, covers the ways disputes get resolved outside a full court trial, primarily mediation and arbitration. They sound similar. They are not. Mediation uses a neutral third party to help the sides reach a voluntary settlement; nobody can force an outcome on you. Arbitration involves a…

Immigration rules, fees, and procedures are changing frequently; confirm current requirements before acting. Consider a composite of situations I encounter regularly. A founder from a treaty country forms a Texas LLC through a ninety-nine-dollar filing website in an afternoon. For convenience, ownership is split casually with a U.S.-based cousin who will “help with the bank…

A standard American estate plan quietly assumes everyone and everything is in the United States. For international families, that assumption fails in expensive ways. Cross-border planning requires attention to U.S. and foreign tax law, beneficiary designations that may not work across jurisdictions, FBAR and FATCA reporting for U.S. persons with foreign accounts, and applicable treaty…

This post discusses Texas law. City property is mostly what you see. Rural property is layered: the surface estate, the mineral estate beneath it, the water rights running through it, and the easements that determine whether you can even reach it. These layers can be owned by different people, and they can significantly affect the…

This post discusses Texas law. For most ranching and farming families, the land is simultaneously the business’s biggest asset and the family’s legacy. That dual identity is exactly why agricultural operations deserve deliberate legal structure, and exactly why so few have one. The operation grew up around the family, not the other way around, and…

This post compares Texas and Illinois law; figures and deadlines are stated generally, so confirm the current rule in the relevant state before acting. My franchise practice spans Texas and Illinois, and the two states sit at nearly opposite ends of American franchise regulation. First-time franchisors expanding from one into the other are routinely surprised…

This post discusses Texas and federal law. Your concept works. Customers ask about opening one in their town. Franchising can be the way to grow with other people’s capital and energy, but the moment you sell the right to operate under your brand, you step into a regulated world with disclosure obligations and documentation requirements…

This post discusses Texas and federal law. Buying a franchise means signing two of the longest documents most people will ever encounter: the Franchise Disclosure Document and the franchise agreement. The FDD discloses the franchise system’s fees, litigation history, obligations, financial performance representations, and more. It exists because regulators decided buyers deserve the full picture,…

This post discusses Texas law. How you hold title affects liability, taxes, and estate planning, and most investors decide it by default, taking title personally because that is what the title company printed. Then a slip-and-fall, a contractor dispute, or a lease claim arrives, and every personal asset stands behind the rental. Investment and rental…

This post discusses Texas law. Honestly? Not always. Many routine transactions close without a hitch on standard forms. But a lawyer earns the fee many times over the moment anything non-standard appears: unusual financing, title problems, entity ownership, boundary or easement questions, commercial terms, or a seller behaving strangely. Having the contract reviewed before you…