Lawrence B. Eisner

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About Me
Both law and business: My father was a lawyer who started a business in the year that I was born. Although he was fully a businessman and ran the business for thirty years, he never completely left law behind. He used the tools of legal analysis and inquiry in his business life, but also conducted many a Moot Court on family trips riding in the car. I grew up with the twin vines of law and business and learned in a very basic way to understand that the two vines are closely entangled and entwined; one vine needs to interact and support the other for a business to be successful. Jurisprudence is a fascinating field of study, but alone it has no value in carrying on business relations. It needs the other piece of business practicality to give it a this-world, down-to-earth effect. Business is the art of making things happen and law provides the enforceable system within which it takes place. Legal structure and business practicality must work together to successfully bring entrepreneurial plans and creative ideas into being. These ideas were sharpened through my experiences in government service, in business and then back into law, described below.
-	After law school, attorney for a few years with the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission in Washington, DC. The Commission was only a couple of years old at that point and still needed to address many Congressional mandates, such as regulating commodity pool operators. As part of the staff of the Commission, created and drafted many regulatory proposals after seeking industry input and assisted at Commission hearings where the public was able to comment on the proposed rules prior to their being adopted.
-	Treasurer and Counsel with my father's building supply business for about six years. My first couple of years with the company occurred during the period of extremely high mortgage rates, which also occurred at about the time of my father's death. After his death, with interest rates still high, many builders failing and others unable to pay their bills, much of my time was spent negotiating with builders, vendors and banks regarding liens, mortgages and repayment structures.
-	Owner and principal for about eight years of a real estate development firm and a construction firm involved with renovations of historic structures. This required much negotiation both with partners and lenders in both the acquisition and development phases. Projects included renovation of an abandoned silver factory into modern commercial office space, and two abandoned state armories in different cities, one into luxury condominium townhouses and the other into tax-credit-assisted housing.
-	Over the course of about five years, in-house counsel for a rapidly growing software engineering/development firm in the healthcare reimbursement industry and then contracts counsel for a startup software development firm in the field of web-based business performance management tools. Used my experience in business practices, legal structures and negotiation to assist both firms to reduce the effective negotiating disparity between the size of the firm and the size of the proposed clients (many large healthcare firms in one instance; many large financial and manufacturing firms in the other). For both firms, reduced the turnaround time from salesman-proposed deal to executed contract. For the first firm, established the legal and contracting department and created and negotiated many end-user, business partner and consulting contracts. Also created a number of standardized contracts, formats, attachments and responses to more quickly turn proposed deals into contracts. For the second firm, revamped the licensing and consulting services contracts to be more customer-friendly and readable, thus eliminating many extraneous objections to proposed contracts.
-	Consultant/counsel for the past couple of years to various clients, particularly a client in the healthcare industry. Undertook special projects for the client to analyze and structure the business and legal issues in complex relationships with hospitals, insurance companies and others, regarding licensing, remarketing and joint marketing of software and consulting services. Created and drafted the necessary contracts and other documents and negotiated the proposed contracts through to execution.