Why We Are Unique

Uncommon Experience, Knowledge, Creativity, Practicality...And Results

Established in 1980, Berns & Berns is a core group of four seasoned attorneys – two partners and four lawyers who are of counsel to us.  All of us have been practicing law for over 40 years. We are low key and discreet – the way almost all the best lawyers used to be.

We are entrepreneurs, professors, and businessmen, having launched new businesses, managed, built and sold them.  Our partners, James Berns and Michael Berns (ret) are each graduates of the Wharton School, and James Berns holds an MBA from Columbia University.  We are particularly attuned to the needs, requirements and stresses of our clients – including adhering to tight deadlines, addressing strategic challenges, and controlling legal costs, to name but a few.   We respect and appreciate the never-ending demands of business and of the real world.  Our background enables us to support and counsel you in ways other lawyers simply cannot.

Whether an entrepreneur is pursuing a dream in starting a new business, building one or selling one, we know that continuing, practical advice along the way often spells the difference between success and costly disappointment.  We provide that advice, give you a competitive edge, identify and solve strategic issues, and help you grow.  Through an international network of financiers and professionals, we may also help you finance your business.

Our law practice primarily focuses on the representation of entrepreneurs, business formation, public and private corporations, SEC practice, going public, stock exchange, NASDAQ, otcQB and otcQX listings, broker-dealer formation, fund raising, litigation and estate planning for individuals.  We are not experts in all areas of the law – and do not presume to be.

Sometimes clients require legal services in other specialized areas.  But just as with the finest doctors,  if we do not believe that we are the right lawyers for a particular matter we will tell you so, and through our extensive network of excellent lawyers with specialized practice areas, we will direct you to lawyers we believe will give you superior service.  In such instances, we can continue to provide you with advice and counsel.  Or you can deal exclusively with the lawyers we refer you to.  Your choice.  Entirely.

From time-to-time throughout our legal careers we have acted as principals in different business, founding and financing them, writing business plans, recruiting management and boards of directors, and assembling operating teams, enlisting strategic partners, taken companies public – and sold them. 

The scope and breadth of our legal careers is special.  Berns & Berns has represented many companies in many industries, foreign, domestic, public and private.  We have also represented a foreign stock exchange with respect to regulatory matters in the United States.  We have held prestigious internships with the SEC (Jim) and the Department of Justice (Michael).  We have successfully lobbied the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, SEC and others for adoption of fundamental rule changes to U.S. capital markets.  We have launched a foreign corporation into the U.S. capital markets which was subsequently bought for several billion dollars.  We have successfully counseled a company to rebuff a hostile takeover offer.  We have been doing these things, and many, many more, for 40 years.

We are Berns & Berns.  We are unique.  We get things done.
We are for you.

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