AREAS OF PRACTICE

Advertising and Marketing

Our Los Angeles team has significant experience counseling clients regarding compliance with state and federal advertising regulations, as well as litigating false and deceptive advertising disputes, including consumer class actions, competitor suits under the Lanham Act, and investigations and actions brought by the Federal Trade Commission, Food & Drug Administration, state Attorneys’ General and National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau.

Our clients include direct response television advertisers, retail stores, online marketers and other direct marketers across such varied industries as technology, food/beverage, dietary supplements, telecommunications, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, children’s toys, and fitness.

Corporate

Our corporate attorneys are focused on handling a wide breadth of complex transactional matters related to company formation, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, finance matters, succession planning, tax strategies, corporate restructurings and more. We represent a broad spectrum of clients, ranging from both domestic and international corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships and joint ventures to emerging growth companies and select start-ups.

We bring substantial insight into the unique business culture and legal climate of the west coast, structuring and negotiating even the most complicated deals.

Intellectual Property

Together with our colleagues throughout the firm, attorneys in Venable's Los Angeles office comprise a nationally renowned team of over 50 intellectual property attorneys, including over 30 registered patent agents. We represent clients throughout California and beyond in a host of domestic and international IP issues, including litigation, licensing and intellectual property transactions, counseling, and patent and trademark prosecution. Among other things, we help our clients obtain and defend patents, secure trademark and domain names, protect their copyrights and negotiate technology transfer licenses and agreements.

Labor and Employment

Venable's nationally recognized Labor and Employment group includes a team of attorneys focused on representing clients on the west coast in a variety of employment-related issues and disputes.

Based in Los Angeles, we have advised and represented national and California-based clients on a broad spectrum of labor and employment law matters, including employment litigation involving discrimination; harassment; unpaid wages; retaliation; privacy invasion; unfair competition; trade secret misappropriation; wrongful termination; breach of contract; and California employment tort and wage-and-hour claims. This regional practice is complemented and supported by a broad range of related practice groups in litigation, employee benefits and executive compensation, intellectual property litigation and business transactions.

Litigation

Venable’s west coast litigation team is comprised of attorneys who have spent decades navigating California's state and federal courts advocating on behalf of their clients.

We are experienced trial attorneys who practice across a wide range of issues, including advertising and marketing, commercial litigation, class actions, intellectual property disputes, product liability, entertainment industry matters, white collar criminal defense and wage-and-hour claims. Our local team is supported nationwide by Venable’s team of more than 200 trial lawyers, whose experience provides us with the depth and capabilities necessary to handle any problem anywhere.

Many of our attorneys—in Los Angeles and throughout the firm—acquired their trial skills in the most demanding environments: in the trenches as assistant U.S. attorneys and as prosecutors for regulatory agencies on major cases. We know our way around the California court system—our litigators regularly represent clients in courts at all levels within the California state system, as well as before the federal courts in California and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Media and Entertainment

Our Los Angeles-based media and entertainment attorneys work with clients in the film, television, home entertainment, direct response, advertising, and media industries. Clients rely on us to resolve disputes and to structure, negotiate and document their business transactions with an efficiency few firms can rival. We also advise entertainers, athletes and others in the industry on a wide range of legal issues, ranging from robust estate, tax and business planning strategies, to advertising, sponsorship and co-branding opportunities, guild and labor issues and more.

Privacy and Data Security

Venable’s West Coast team brings together a deep understanding of one of the most critical tools of your business – information. Clients’ ability to collect data on customers, competitors, employees, and ideas is both an asset and a liability. We have significant experience in self-regulatory bodies such as the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau (“BBB”) and the BBB’s Electronic Retailing Self-regulatory Program.

Our team of advertising and privacy lawyers is recognized around the world for their knowledge and experience with the regulations that govern data security, advertising and privacy. They combine this experience with proven success in helping companies navigate and defend against government investigations and litigation.

SEC and White Collar Defense

Our Los Angeles attorneys have significant experience representing corporate and individual clients in federal and state criminal proceedings across a wide array of areas, including FCPA matters, financial and accounting fraud, bankruptcy fraud, securities fraud including insider trading, environmental violations, money laundering, asset forfeiture issues, bulk cash smuggling, narcotics trafficking (including "doctor diversion" cases), alleged visa fraud, extradition matters, and mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs).

We assist clients across all phases of white collar criminal and securities enforcement matters, including civil enforcement and criminal grand jury investigations, regulatory and parallel civil proceedings, as well as representation at trial and on appeal. Our team has handled nearly 100 jury trials to verdict.

Tax and Wealth Planning

Clients along the west coast turn to Venable's team of tax and wealth planning attorneys to provide federal, state, local and international tax advice. Our tax and wealth attorneys advise corporations, nonprofits, individuals and families in all manner of tax-related issues.

In addition to providing counsel on corporate and nonprofit tax matters, we provide advice on wealth planning to high-net-worth individuals. We also help our clients resolve tax controversies, provide counsel on tax policy legislation, and advise on a host of cross-border tax matters.

Based in the heart of Century City, Venable’s Los Angeles attorneys are ideally located to service the needs of the firm’s clients in the business and entertainment communities, serving as much more than local counsel.

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