Our Background and Commitment
Over the years, Lathrop & Gage L.C. has had the privilege of representing many of the region’s largest and most prominent charitable organizations. It has also been our privilege to represent many other charitable organizations which, although relatively smaller in size, play important and crucial roles in the social fabric of our region. Overall we have represented well over 150 local and regional charitable organizations. Lathrop & Gage’s experience in providing legal services to charitable organizations is unparalleled in the region, and matched only by the firm’s commitment to providing the highest quality, most cost-effective representation.
Because of the level of work that we have done in the charitable organizations area over the years, we have developed a separate Charitable Organizations Department headed and staffed by individuals who spend substantial amounts of their time dealing with the specific legal needs of these organizations. With Lathrop & Gage, you’ll work with the most knowledgeable and experienced lawyers in the region in representing tax-exempt charitable organizations. The Charitable Organizations Department together with other members of the firm with expertise in all the issues that impact your organization – corporate governance, charitable giving, government affairs, labor and employment, intellectual property, and litigation – provide industry-focused, strategic legal advice to our tax-exempt charitable organization clients. And most important to you, we are cost-effective. Our level of expertise and depth of resources available to your organization will translate into cost-effective representation.
Our People
The attorneys in our Charitable Organizations Department are a superb collection of practitioners. Additionally, the department is staffed by some of the most senior and experienced members of our firm, and also includes attorneys with all other levels of experience, including associates, who we feel are the brightest and the best in the nation. Many of the members of the department have been recognized by their peers as being outstanding practitioners in the field. We urge you to peruse the biographies of the department’s attorneys that are included later in this brochure.
The Breadth of Our Practice
There is an almost infinite variety of tax-exempt charitable organizations, and Lathrop & Gage’s practice reflects that variety. We represent a wide range of these organizations including, among others:
We also represent numerous social welfare, trade and business associations, and other tax-exempt organizations that do not qualify as charitable organizations but whose legal structures and needs are similar to those of charitable organizations.
Our Approach
Some of the tax-exempt charitable organizations that we represent do not have significant legal needs, and we may provide few services to these clients after they have been organized and recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as tax-exempt organizations. Others of our tax-exempt charitable organization clients have substantial and continuing legal needs. We strive to provide exactly the right amount and type of help to each specific client.
The Charitable Organizations Department also strives to assist each client in the way that the client wants to be served. In general, however, we try to involve in each client’s affairs a senior member of the department to make sure that our assignments are handled properly and one or more Associates to perform as much of the work as possible at as low a cost as possible. Clients may deal with only one member of the team or with all of the members of the team, as they choose.
Our Charitable Organizations Department is organized and operated to serve our charitable clients as well, as personally, as quickly, and as cost effectively as possible.