Counsel for business owners who are building, protecting, and successfully exiting a company.
Elder Firm, APC brings the legal needs of business owners into one trusted relationship. Litigation and employment disputes, corporate work, M&A, succession planning, and estate planning are handled with one connected view of the company and the owner behind it. Because for business owners, the contract, the dispute, the deal, and the future are never separate.
Strategic counsel, not reactive lawyering.
Most legal work is reactive. A problem lands, a lawyer responds. We work the other way around: we learn how a business runs and get ahead of the risks and opportunities before they surface.
Many business lawyers draft without litigation judgment. Many litigators have never run point on a deal. We do both, so the contract, the dispute, the sale, and the estate are handled as one connected picture.
Legal counsel for the full life cycle of a business.
Most legal problems do not stay in one box. A contract issue becomes a lawsuit. A lawsuit exposes a governance gap. A sale raises tax, employment, and succession questions at once. Elder Firm, APC is built for owners who want counsel that sees the whole picture, not one corner of it.
Business & Corporate
Entity formation, governance, operating and shareholder agreements, contracts, and the day-to-day legal needs of a working company. The corporate foundation that keeps disputes and deals from becoming problems later.
Business & Employment Litigation
Disputes handled with business judgment and trial credibility: ownership and partnership breakups, contract claims, and employment matters. Pre-litigation strategy when the goal is to resolve it, trial readiness when it is not.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Buy-side and sell-side representation through diligence, structure, negotiation, and closing. Attention to the indemnity, earnout, and post-closing issues that surface long after the papers are signed.
Business Value & Sale Readiness
Work that makes a company more transferable and less dependent on its owner: cleaning up corporate records, de-risking key contracts, and positioning the business so it is ready when a sale or transition arrives.
Ownership Succession & Exit Planning
Moving the business to the next owner or generation on your terms: ownership transfers, buy-sell agreements, and the trust and estate structures that protect the value built over a career. Built around the company and the owner.
Outside General Counsel
Ongoing, experienced legal support for owners who need a go-to counsel without the cost of a full-time in-house hire. One relationship that already knows your business when something comes up.
Keith F. Elder
Keith F. Elder founded Elder Firm, APC to give business owners the kind of counsel usually split across several firms: corporate advice, litigation judgment, outside general counsel, and exit and estate planning, under one roof.
Licensed in California and the District of Columbia, he has spent more than 25 years advising founders, owners, companies, and families through formation, growth, disputes, risk, and succession.
The firm is principal-led by design, with the personal attention business owners rarely get at a larger firm.
Serving clients from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.
BUSINESS, LITIGATION & PLANNING COUNSEL