"I'd be out of a job if you didn't have these questions."
I say that often, usually to someone who's just apologized for asking, after paying to speak to me.
People come to me embarrassed, certain everyone else has it figured out: entities, tax elections, operating agreements. The questions you're apologizing for are the entire reason I have a practice.
After years of watching this unfold in litigation, I moved to the other side. My work now is meant to keep you off a lawyer's calendar entirely, catching things while they're still decisions, not disputes. Nobody regrets the hour they spent getting it right. And let's be frank, no one wins in litigation but the attorneys, so let's keep them at bay.
What's Keeping You Up at Night, and What Actually Should Be
Most people arrive with something specific gnawing at them. Sometimes they're right to worry. More often, they're worried about entirely the wrong thing. They're losing sleep over a filing deadline while the real problem sits three pages into an operating agreement nobody read.
Part of my job is telling you which is which. That sometimes means handing you something new to worry about, which isn't pleasant, but I'll do it anyway. The rest of my job is making sure you don't stay worried.
Business structures and tax elections aren't inherently difficult to understand. It's just that no one's been bothered to care if you understand their explanation.
I've spent my career translating. First to students. Then to clients having the worst week of their lives. Then to business owners who politely nodded at advice they never followed because no one made it make sense. I'd rather explain something twice than sell you a structure you don't understand.
And I'll never sell you something you don't need.
If You've Already Set Something Up,
Let's Make Sure It Does What You Need
You bought a package. Someone filed it. It came with documents you didn't read, and you've had a quiet feeling ever since that it doesn't quite fit what you actually do.
That's not embarrassing, and I won't treat it that way. You paid for a filing service and you got a filing service. Nobody asked how you make money, who else is involved, or what happens when you sell. That wasn't the product.
Most of it is fixable. Wrong entity, wrong state, members who shouldn't be listed, an operating agreement describing a business you no longer run, an election nobody explained. I've untangled all of it. It's just easier now than in three years. Once an election is made, unwinding it costs. Once a buyer starts diligence, your structure is what it is.
Bring what you've got. Even if it's a mess. We'll fix it together.
I'd Rather Work With You for Years Than for an Hour
Your structure is a photograph of your business the day you filed it. Businesses grow.
You add a partner. Buy property in another state. Hire someone. Revenue crosses a line that makes a tax election worth reconsidering. None of it announces itself, and none of it updates your paperwork. The gap opens slowly and gets found at the worst possible moment: a sale, a loan, a dispute, an audit.
The clients I'm most useful to are the ones I hear from again. Not because something went wrong, but because something changed and they thought to ask. Small check-ins instead of big repairs.
That's the relationship I want: someone who knows your business well enough that the fifth consultation is faster than the first.
Where the Judgment Comes From
Litigation. I represented people in probate fights, personal injury cases, civil rights suits, and criminal court, where you learn to explain something hard to someone who is frightened, and where you find out what an operating agreement really means years later, when it has to hold weight somebody assumed it would. Serious disputes rarely start with bad faith. They start with a template that was silent on the one question that mattered. Most people advising on structure have never watched a document get tested. I have.
Offshore compliance. At a law firm in Bermuda I went from assisting on anti-money-laundering matters to being responsible for the firm's AML and counter-terrorist-financing policies. It's why I ask what a bank, a judge, and a regulator will see, not whether a structure is clever and comes with a big price tag. Those clever ones tend to end up in Tax Court.
An LL.M. in Taxation, 2026. Three years of graduate study in tax, done at night while running my practice. It means I can tell you what an S-election commits you to before you make it, move an entity between states without triggering a bill nobody warned you about, and work backward from a sale you haven't made yet, because that tax bill is mostly decided years in advance.
Your CPA works on the year you already had. I work on the year you haven't had yet.
Plainly
I don't form companies. I tell you what to form and why, which means I have no stake in what gets built. If the simple answer is the right one, I'll say so, and it'll cost you less.
I grew up in southwest Louisiana, where nobody is impressed by vocabulary. That's probably where the habit started.
Education
LL.M., Taxation · University of Denver Sturm College of Law, 2026
M.S., Criminology and Criminal Justice · Northeastern University, 2015
J.D. · University of Denver Sturm College of Law, 2012
B.S., Sociology with a concentration in Criminology · Louisiana State University, 2007