We empower small business owners
We work with small business owners and their families to bring clarity, education, and guidance to their legal needs. As a result of our work, people are empowered to follow their dreams, have satisfying lives, and operate with grace and peace.
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Legal help for Minneapolis small business owners
Lucēre Legal is a Minnesota law firm offering comprehensive services in the areas of small business law, litigation, real estate, estate planning, and probate administration. We work with small business owners because we know business, love business, and are ourselves business owners.
Co-Founders Kimberly and Sommer and the other Lucēre attorneys have a different approach to lawyering than most of their colleagues – everything from how they approach client relationships to how they advise people. They believe that the business-as-usual model for law firms doesn’t work for people, so they took on a whole new way of serving clients. Come and see what makes our firm different – we have a fresh approach to traditional legal dilemmas.
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Start & Grow
We help small businesses start up and grow.
Protect
We help small business owners protect what matters most to them.
Legal
We help small businesses bring and defend law suits, and we help them stay in regulatory compliance.
Value
We help small business owners with high value, cost effective solutions.
We are a different kind of Small Business and Estate Planning law firm
It is not enough for a law firm to say they are different. They actually have to be different, to come from a totally different mindset, to have a totally different business model, and to have a totally different way of working with clients. We don’t just say we are different – we actually are.
The traditional experience, whether you are looking for small business law or estate planning, is to go to an attorney when you need something specific handled, like incorporation documents or a contract drafted, or a will or a trust. That attorney listens attentively, drafts whatever it is that you need, charges you for the document (and you may or may not have known the cost in advance), and then you go your merry way.
Maybe you will get a holiday card from your attorney (if you are lucky), but otherwise you don’t hear from them and they don’t hear from you. Of course, why would you call them? If you called them, that would start the billing meter running again.
Then, life happens, your circumstances change, the law changes, and your whatever-it-was legal document is no longer doing its job.
If it’s a business matter, things happen even more rapidly and operating without the right legal advice can get you into a lot of trouble. The wipe-you-off-the-map kind of trouble.
If it’s an estate plan, your estate is going to have to go through probate, despite your intentions otherwise, or your estate is now taxable, or your disabled beneficiary is now going to lose their ability to get the help they need. All sorts of things can happen that affect your estate plan.
You think you are protected because you went to see that lawyer whenever-it-was in the past, but really it’s a false sense of security.
Wouldn’t it be better to have an ongoing relationship with your lawyer, so when life happened and things changed, you could call and find out if those changes impact you? And wouldn’t it be better if your lawyer knew you well enough to know when changes in the law might impact you, and let you know about it?
Wouldn’t it be better if you had someone to call when a legal situation came up, and they could send you to the attorney they know and trust who handles that area of law if they couldn’t help you themselves? It would be like having a lawyer in the family. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Well, that is what we do and that is how we are different. Yes, we draft documents – but those documents are a by-product of our relationship with our clients. Really, we are trusted advisors and we are in it for the long-haul. We aren’t interested in drafting your documents and then hanging you out to dry. We want to be your lawyers for life.
If you think that sounds better than just having a document drafted and then being left to fend for yourself, give us a call.
100% Satisfaction Guarantee
At Lucēre Legal, we are so confident in our ability to serve you well that we guarantee you will be happy with your service, or you can adjust your bill and pay us what you think our service was worth to you, all the way down to zero. We cannot guarantee any particular outcome in a case, but we can guarantee how you will be treated and the quality of work that we produce for you.
The value exceeds the price
We believe that the value of the work we do should exceed the price, from your point of view. That’s why we do most of our work on a no-surprise, fixed-fee basis. We even do some business litigation on a fixed-fee subscription model. We know that you have to make wise choices with your resources, and we’re here to provide cost effective, top quality legal work.
Who We Work With
Positive, Friendly, Growth-Oriented, Up to Something Small Business Owners
We work with all sorts of small business clients – service industries, professionals, retail, manufacturing, software, healthcare, real estate . . . and more. Some are one-man shops, some have dozens of employees. Some are new ventures, some are third-generation companies. And everything in between. But there are a handful of things that all our clients have in common – they are positive, friendly, growth-oriented, and up to something. Our clients really are the loveliest people. If you fit this description, we’d love to work with you, no matter your business, industy, size, or history.
Joanne Meehl
Owner| Joanne Meehl Career Services
Business set-up
We help people set up LLC’s, corporations, partnerships, and multi-level organizational structures.
Contract Drafting & Review
We help draft tailor made contracts that fit your business, and we help review and revise contracts that others hand you.
Lawsuits
We help small business owners bring lawsuits when needed, and defend lawsuits when needed – and we even have a no-surprise, fixed fee litigation pricing model.
Estate Planning
We help people at all levels of estate planning, from the most basic last will plan to the most complex tax and asset protection plan, as well as business sucession estate plans and cabin estate plans.
Trademarks & Copyrights
We help register, defend, and enforce trademarks and copyrights.
Real Estate
We help people with all sorts of real estate issues – purchase agreements, leases, title issues, breach of warranty, easements . . . we could go on and on.
Collections
We help you collect when your customers don’t pay you.
Guardianships
We help families with guardianship (care of the person) and conservatorship (management of financial affairs) cases, both uncontested and contested.
Hiring & Firing
We help business owners with the legal issues related to staffing employees and independent contractors.
Franchises
We help people understand their rights and obligations as franchisees, purchase a franchise, sell and transfer their franchise, and on the other side . . . decide if franchising is right for their company and set up the franchising structure.
Buying & Selling Businesses
We help people prepare and sell their business, and we help people buy businesses.
Probate & Trust Administration
We help you with the process when your loved one has died.
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The plain-English guide for Minnesota small business owners
When it comes to business, ignorance isn’t bliss; ignorance is risk.
There’s a handful of legal topics that business owners should be familiar with, at least on a rudimentary level, to reduce the risk of having something horrible come out of left field.
This book is a legal guide to help you put the most common business legal issues on your radar, with enough information for you to be on the alert for when you may need to get some professional advice.
The intention in arming you with this information is so that you can proceed in business confidently and with fewer legal quagmires.
Do you have a cabin?
The first generation that buys a cabin enjoys it to the fullest and it’s a magical place where happy memories are made and families go for some much needed respite. Unfortunately, without thoughtful planning, the chances of the cabin staying a place of happiness and tranquility into successive generations is very, very slim.
If you haven’t done the planning in advance and made it legally binding, the family members (and their ex-spouses and new spouses) will have to work every detail out for themselves. If they can’t, what is likely to happen is a lawsuit called an action for partition that forces everyone to sell their interest. This lawsuit is expensive, and the costs of litigation will come out of the proceeds of the sale of the cabin, so to add insult to injury to those who wanted to keep the cabin but couldn’t afford to buy the others out, they are footing part of the legal bills in the lawsuit against them. Ouch!
It’s no wonder that family members stop speaking for years after the cabin conflict is “resolved.” You can’t make family relationships perfect, but you can take away much of the fuel for the family conflict fire. That’s what cabin planning does, and it has the nice side effect of giving you peace of mind now.
That’s why Kimberly wrote The Minnesota Cabin Planning Guide and Workbook, and you can get a free electronic copy of her book on our cabin planning website, or you can find it in many county libraries in Minnesota, or you can get it on amazon.com.
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6 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Business Entity
What good is a house without a solid foundation? Same goes for your business. No, I’m not talking about your building’s actual, physical foundation—though that’s important, too—but the business entity you decide upon for your company. Whatever you choose, the tax,...
You Don’t Need to Be Rich: 6 Reasons Why a Trust Fund is for Anyone
Most of us, when we hear the words “trust fund”, we roll our eyes—but should we? Hollywood soap operas have for decades portrayed trust funds as a haven for only the children of the wealthiest families. You’ll be happy to know that the reality is far different from...
We can meet in person or by videoconference
We know you’re busy, and you might not want to take the time to drive to our office and find parking. If you’re an in-person person, we’re happy to have you in our office, but if you’re not, we’re happy to meet with you via technology.
Kimberly M. Hanlon
Co-Founder & Attorney at Law
Kimberly is not your typical lawyer. She came to law by way of the design industry, and she is as much an entreprenuer as she is an attorney. Kimberly focuses her practice on business transactional cases (things like business set-ups, contracts, and buying or selling a business) and estate cases (things like making wills and trusts).
Sommer Spector
Co-Founder & Attorney at Law
Sommer is a courtroom rockstar. Before co-founding Lucere Legal, Sommer spent fourteen years in crimnal defense and has had more than fifty jury trials. (That’s more than most business litigators have in an entire career.) Sommer focuses her practice on business litigation cases, regulatory compliance, and real estate issues.
Barbara Heen
Attorney at Law
Barbara is an estates and probate attorney who works in the areas of wills & trusts, cabin planning, and probate administration.
Jennifer Milchak
Attorney at Law
Jennifer is a business attorney who works in the areas of business formations, non-profits, contracts, and employment issues.
Julie Velasquez
Attorney at Law
Julie is a real estate and estate planning attorney who works in the areas of real estate transactions, title issues, last will planning, and trust planning.
Shelley McKendry
Office Manager & Client Service Director
Shelley makes sure that things at the firm are running smoothly and helps to keep client communications and cases moving forward.
“Lucere Legal has been an incredible asset for my new business. As a small town local agency in Central Minnesota, I needed light assistance in the business startup documentation and I often leaned on their organization as a sounding board to affirm future decisions in my business. If you are about to launch a small start-up business, or are looking to formulate a partnership, I would recommend reaching out to Lucere Legal in an effort to run your contracts and documentation past them. These attorneys are very connected in the community and continue to connect me with other credible and fantastic business resources to date. Thank you to the entire team at Lucere Legal! I just celebrated 2 years in business.”
Tim Schmidt
Owner/Agency511
“Kimberly Hanlon’s attention to detail is so important when dealing with legal contracts, issues. She is impressive because she is a strong business woman with a law degree. She’s the one I want in my corner! An A+++ professional and I have referred her with great results too!“
Deb Wieberdink
Owner/Tote Your Way
“I recently worked with Kimberly on a few legal documents that I needed for a small business I run. Kimberly took great care to understand the nuances of the business and crafted documents that protect myself and my business. She was professional, easy to work with, and helped me consider aspects of the legal documents (and the business itself) that I had never thought of previously.
Highly recommended!“
Brandon Olson
Co-owner/Sterling Realty & Management
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