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Business Law for Texas Entrepreneurs

From Formation to Exit, We’ve Got You Covered

How We
Can Help

Business law covers everything you need to start, run, protect, and eventually exit your business in Texas. It’s how you make sure your contracts actually protect you, that your business structure shields your personal assets, and that you’re not walking into legal problems that could cost you everything you’ve built.

Business Formation & Entity Selection

The structure you choose at the start LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp, partnership affects how you're taxed, how your personal assets are treated if something goes wrong, and how complicated things get when you eventually want to sell or step away. Getting it right from the beginning is considerably easier than fixing it later.

Contracts & Agreements

A contract's job is to protect you when the other party doesn't do what they said they would. Vague language, missing terms, and generic templates tend to surface as problems at exactly the wrong moment. We draft and review business contracts with an eye toward what could go wrong before you sign.

Succession Planning

Most business owners spend years building something valuable and very little time thinking about what happens to it when they're ready to leave. Whether you're planning to pass the business to family, sell to a partner, or bring in an outside buyer, the transition works better when the plan exists before you need it.

Asset Protection Strategies

Your business activity and your personal assets are legally separate but only if the structure is set up and maintained correctly. We help business owners understand how that separation works and what it takes to keep it intact.

Tax Planning & Compliance

Business structure decisions have tax consequences that compound over time. We work with business owners and their CPAs to make sure the legal structure of the business is aligned with how they want to be taxed and that nothing in the documentation creates an unintended liability.

Business Valuation Support

Whether you're planning to sell, bring in a partner, handle a buyout, or incorporate the business into your estate plan, you need a clear picture of what the business is actually worth. We support that process and help make sure the legal structure reflects the valuation accurately.

Intellectual Property Protection

Your trademarks, proprietary processes, and business identity have value and that value depends on whether they're properly documented and defended. We help business owners identify what needs protection and put the right structures in place.

"We don't just draft documents, we protect what you've worked your whole life to build."

Thomas D. Fortenberry

Myth: I don't need an LLC—I'm just a small business.

Wrong. The size of your business has nothing to do with whether you need legal protection. If you’re operating as a sole proprietor, there’s zero separation between you and your business. That means when your business gets sued, your personal assets are on the line—your house, your car, your savings, everything.

An LLC creates a legal barrier between your business and your personal life. It’s not bulletproof, but it’s a whole lot better than having zero protection. And setting one up costs a fraction of what you’ll lose if someone comes after your personal assets.

Myth: Online contract templates work just fine.

No, they don’t. I see bad contracts every single week—agreements downloaded from the internet that are missing critical provisions, have conflicting terms, or don’t comply with Texas law. And when things go south, those contracts are worthless.

A good contract is tailored to your specific situation and actually protects you when something goes wrong. Generic templates are one-size-fits-all, and in business law, one size fits nobody. You’ll spend more money fixing the problems from a bad contract than you would’ve spent having a lawyer draft it correctly the first time.

Myth: Intellectual property protection is only for tech companies.

Not even close. If you’ve got a business name, a logo, a unique process, or any proprietary information that gives you a competitive advantage, you need to protect it. I’ve worked with restaurants protecting their recipes, construction companies protecting their processes, and retail businesses protecting their brand names.

Trademarks, patents, trade secrets—these aren’t just for Silicon Valley. They’re for any business that wants to make sure competitors can’t steal what makes them special. And if you don’t protect your IP, someone else will take it and you’ll have no legal recourse.

Here's What Our Clients Say

Bill G.
Mr Fortenberry was great to work with. He listened to our concerns and desires, and then recommended the best course of action. No high pitched sales presentations; just honest and unbiased input. What a wonderful place to do business.
Richard L.
Tom answered all of or questions and gave us information we had been unaware of prior to our meeting. It was truly a learning experience, and we couldn't have asked for a better meeting.
Barbara C.
Tom is knowledgeable, communicates well, easy to talk to and reminds us of things we may not have considered. We really appreciated his help. Highly recommend
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Frequently Asked Questions

Group of cheerful diverse colleagues discussing court decision at table with notepad and cup

An LLC is the most flexible business structure. It protects your personal assets from business liabilities, and you can choose how you want to be taxed: as a sole proprietor, partnership, S-Corp, or C-Corp.
An S-Corp is a tax election that can save you money on self-employment taxes. You pay yourself a reasonable salary and take the rest as distributions, which aren’t subject to self-employment tax.
A C-Corp is taxed as a separate entity, which means the corporation pays taxes on its profits, and then you pay taxes again when you take distributions (double taxation). C-Corps make sense for some businesses, but most small businesses are better off as LLCs or S-Corps.
We help you figure out which structure makes the most sense for your situation. A revocable living trust avoids all of that. You transfer your assets into the trust while you’re alive, and when you die, your successor trustee distributes everything according to your wishes: no court, no delays, no public record. It’s faster, cheaper, and more private.

Yes. Even if you’re the only member of your LLC, you need an operating agreement. It’s the document that governs how your LLC operates: who makes decisions, how profits are distributed, what happens if you want to sell or bring in a partner.

Without an operating agreement, you’re stuck with Texas’s default LLC rules, and trust me you don’t want that. We draft operating agreements that are tailored to your business and protect your interests.

A good business contract should include:

  • Who the parties are and what they’re agreeing to
  • The scope of work or services being provided
  • Payment terms (how much, when, and how)
  • Deadlines and milestones
  • What happens if someone breaches the contract
  • How disputes will be resolved (litigation, arbitration, mediation)
  • Termination provisions
  • Any warranties or guarantees
  • Confidentiality and non-compete clauses (if applicable)

Every contract is different, but those are the basics. We review and draft contracts to make sure you’re protected.

You protect your business name and logo by registering them as trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. A trademark gives you exclusive rights to use that name or logo in your industry, and it prevents competitors from using something confusingly similar.

Before you spend money on branding and marketing, you need to make sure nobody else is already using your name or logo. We conduct trademark searches and handle the registration process for you.

A trademark protects your brand; your business name, logo, slogan, or anything else that identifies your business to customers.

A patent protects your invention a new product, process, or technology. Patents are expensive and time-consuming to get, but if you’ve invented something truly unique, they’re worth it.

I started my career as a patent attorney, so I’ve helped hundreds of inventors protect their ideas. We can help you figure out whether you need a trademark, a patent, or both.

Succession planning is figuring out what happens to your business when you’re no longer able to run it whether that’s because you retire, get disabled, or die. It includes:

  • Who takes over as owner
  • Who runs the day-to-day operations
  • How the transition is funded
  • How to minimize taxes on the transfer

You should start succession planning as soon as you have a business worth passing on. The earlier you start, the more options you have and the less tax you’ll pay.

You can, but that’s not a succession plan that’s just a transfer of ownership. Your kids might not know how to run the business. They might not want to run it. They might fight over it. And in the meantime, your business could fall apart.

A good succession plan addresses all of that. It includes training, buy-sell agreements, life insurance funding, and a clear plan for who does what. We help you create a succession plan that actually works.

A buy-sell agreement is a contract between business partners that says what happens if one of them dies, gets disabled, wants to retire, or wants out of the business. It prevents fights and makes sure the business can keep operating.

For example, if you and your business partner each own 50% of an LLC, and your partner dies, do you really want to be in business with his widow? Probably not. A buy-sell agreement funded with life insurance makes sure you can buy out his share and keep running the business.

Asset protection works in layers. Here are some strategies we use:

  • Set up your business as an LLC or corporation to create a legal barrier between your business and personal assets
  • Use separate entities for different business activities (e.g., one LLC owns the real estate, another LLC operates the business)
  • Get good insurance—general liability, professional liability, umbrella policies
  • Use asset protection trusts to move high-value assets outside your estate
  • Structure your business ownership to make it harder for creditors to seize your interest

Asset protection isn’t about hiding assets it’s about using legal structures to protect what you’ve built.

Cost segregation is a tax strategy that accelerates depreciation on commercial real estate. Instead of depreciating your building over 39 years, you break it down into components: electrical, plumbing, flooring, etc. and depreciate those over 5, 7, or 15 years.

This front-loads your depreciation deductions, which means you save tens of thousands of dollars in taxes in the early years of owning the property. We work with cost segregation specialists and your CPA to make sure you’re taking advantage of this.

You need a business valuation if you’re:

  • Selling your business
  • Buying out a partner
  • Going through a divorce and the business is part of the marital estate
  • Doing estate planning and need to know the value for tax purposes
  • Bringing in investors or applying for financing

A business valuation gives you a defensible number based on your financials, industry comparables, and market conditions. We work with certified valuation experts to get you an accurate number.

It depends on what you need. We charge flat fees for business formations, contract reviews, and trademark registrations. For ongoing work, like succession planning, asset protection, or litigation we charge by the hour.

We’ll give you an estimate up front so you know what to expect. And compared to the cost of fixing a problem after it blows up, hiring a lawyer on the front end is always the better investment.