Overview

Helping Clients Build, Grow, and Transition with Confidence

Our corporate practice advises clients throughout their entire lifecycle. We understand the challenges C-Suite and in-house counsel face. We serve as trusted legal advisors to privately held and middle-market companies across many industries. Whether managing day-to-day operations or executing a major transaction, our team delivers practical, business-first legal solutions that help clients move forward with confidence.

1. Formation & Early Growth

  • Entity Formation & Governance
  • Founder Agreements
  • Early-Stage Financing (Convertible Notes, SAFEs, Seed Rounds)
  • Employment & Equity Compensation Structures
  • IP Strategy & Licensing (in collaboration with IP team)

2. Scaling & Operations

  • Commercial Contracts & Strategic Alliances
  • Corporate Governance & Compliance
  • Vendor & Customer Agreements
  • Data Privacy & Cybersecurity (cross-practice)
  • Employment & Executive Compensation

3. Capital Raising & Strategic Transactions

  • Private Equity & Venture Capital Investments
  • Joint Ventures & Strategic Partnerships
  • Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Securities & Capital Markets
  • Due Diligence & Transaction Structuring

4. Exit & Succession

  • M&A (Sell-Side Representation)
  • Recapitalizations & Buyouts
  • Succession Planning (in collaboration with Wealth Planning)
  • Post-Transaction Integration
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Chambers & Partners

Michael Best's Corporate practice is ranked by Chambers USA: Band 2 in Wisconsin and Band 3 in Utah.

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Best Law Firms

Best Lawyers® ‘Best Law Firms' recognizes our Corporate Law Practice as National Tier 3 and Metropolitan Tier 1 in Madison, Milwaukee, and Utah.

Our Approach: Finding Balance Within the Law

We strive to provide the right balance between the breadth of experience found at global firms and the personalized attention typical of smaller practices. We offer deep experience in corporate transactions and governance, with a national reach accessing a broad bench of legal talent, flexible engagement models, and unmatched responsiveness and client service.

We take the time to understand our client’s business, industry, and ambitions, then tailor legal strategies to support success across the full corporate lifecycle:

  • Start Strong: Entity formation, governance structures, and early-stage financing
  • Run Smoothly: Contract negotiation, compliance, and risk management
  • Grow Strategically: Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and capital raises
  • Plan Ahead: Succession planning and leadership transitions
"The team possesses significant transactional experience, structuring deals and negotiating contracts for clients across a broad spectrum of sectors, including healthcare, manufacturing, technology and financial services."
– Chambers & Partners
"Michael Best & Friedrich LLP keeps complex transactions moving forward."
– Chambers & Partners
"The firm has deep experience in M&A and strong knowledge across several business segments."
– Chambers & Partners
"The team knows our industry and are trusted advisors."
– Chambers & Partners

Focus Areas

Our attorneys advise borrowers and lenders on a wide range of financing transactions, including secured and unsecured loans, syndicated credit facilities, and asset-based lending. We help clients structure financing arrangements that support operational flexibility and growth.

We serve as outside general counsel to privately held and middle-market companies, providing day-to-day legal support across commercial contracts, governance, compliance, and risk management. Our team delivers practical, business-first advice tailored to each client’s operations and growth stage.

Our M&A team has substantial experience advising clients in the middle-market on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, asset purchases, joint ventures, and reorganizations of companies in virtually all industries.

We structure, negotiate, and close transactions for a diverse array of clients, ranging from individuals to financial institutions and publicly held companies. We have experience representing buyers and sellers, as well as management teams and minority owners. In addition to traditional merger, asset, and stock purchase transactions, we advise on completing recapitalizations, management and non-management leveraged buyouts, spin-offs, reorganizations, and other complex restructurings.

Close Your Next Deal

Finding the right financing structure can be the difference between surviving and thriving. Michael Best’s Capital Markets team acts as a strategic partner to companies in all phases—and all roles—of the financing process. We represent companies seeking capital, as well as financial institutions, investors, and investment advisors.

Our interdisciplinary team provides practical and responsive advice across a wide range of capital markets and securities transactions. We take a holistic, collaborative approach to offer comprehensive representation in complex financing, drawing on Michael Best’s full range of practices including tax, environmental, bankruptcy, intellectual property, wealth planning, and ERISA law.

Fund Your Knowledge

Effective taxation work includes both comprehensive planning based on continually changing tax laws and resolution of tax controversies.

With our emphasis on proactive tax planning, our Tax team enables our clients to optimize the structure of transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, spin-offs, and related transactions, ultimately achieving maximum tax efficiency. Throughout every tax engagement, we consider not only the client’s immediate tax concerns, but their entire business, as we craft an effective solution.

Our lawyers also assist clients with tax compliance and provide representation before all taxing authorities. We monitor proposed tax law changes at all levels in order to keep our clients well informed. Our team implements cutting-edge strategies to mitigate the deleterious impacts of unfavorable new laws, and to maximize any opportunities these changes bring.

Discover Tax Solutions

We represent emerging companies and investors in venture capital and private equity transactions. From early-stage financings to growth equity and exit strategies, we help clients structure deals that support innovation and long-term value creation.

Scale Your Business

Experience

Comprehensive Corporate Counsel

We’re proud to support clients across a wide range of corporate matters, including:

Commercial sized freezer filled with frozen foods.

Represented one of the world’s largest manufacturers of frozen foods in its acquisition of substantially all the assets of a frozen food manufacturer and distributor. We provided counsel in all aspects of M&A, including due diligence, document drafting, and structuring for tax purposes.

Medicine vials on a production line.

Represented a regenerative medicine company in its merger with a global specialty biopharmaceutical company, which involved cash consideration at closing and cash consideration tied to certain FDA regulatory approvals and revenue from product sales.

  • Represented a regenerative medicine company in its merger with a global specialty biopharmaceutical company, which involved cash consideration at closing and cash consideration tied to certain FDA regulatory approvals and revenue from product sales.
  • Represented a pharmaceutical company that develops novel compounds for the treatment of schizophrenia and other central nervous system disorders. Michael Best advised the company in negotiating the terms of a $26 million Series C financing and in corporate governance matters related to the financing.
  • Represented the lead investor in a Wisconsin-based developer of new technologies and production methodologies in nuclear medicine through its first three rounds of financing. The developer undertook a complex recapitalization to simplify its capital structure and position itself for new financing. We represented the lead investor in negotiating the terms of the recapitalization and a new $20 million convertible note financing. The developer is among those to create a domestic source of molybdenum-99 (Moly 99), the basis for the medical isotope technetium-99, which is used in medical scans to diagnose heart disease and cancer.

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