Business and Trial Lawyer in the Tampa Bay Area
Attorney handling the following practice areas: Business law, corporate law, business disputes, collections, construction law, landlord-tenant, homeowner and condominium associations, non-profits, child custody, and trial
Business and Corporate Law
Streetman Law counsels small businesses through all of their unique needs. Streetman Law can help you start your business, from selecting the best type of entity to preparing and filing the necessary corporate documents. Streetman Law can set you up with corporate record keeping forms and procedures to help you find your way out of the maze of corporate record requirements and let you get back to doing what you do best. Streetman Law will prepare contracts that meet your unique needs as a small business, including purchase and sale contracts, revolving credit agreements, non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements for exploring new opportunities, and enforceable non-compete agreements to keep your valuable employees from raiding your even more valuable client list and confidential business information. Streetman Law can also guide you through the transition or sale of your business when you decide to move on to greener pastures.
Business Disputes
Streetman Law represents individuals and businesses in all manner of disputes. Whether the disagreement arises out of a broken contract, an unfair act, or merely the natural end of a business relationship, Streetman Law will aggressively protect your interests. Streetman Law has successfully litigated, arbitrated, and mediated numerous disputes between businesses and individuals. Our strategy and tactics set us apart. While many lawyers’ only tactic is to start a paper war, that tactic almost always results in an unfocused and ineffective campaign. Strategy is an afterthought for those lawyers. It costs clients a ton of money to pay their lawyers to generate so much useless paper, and the lawyers cannot see the forest for the trees. In other words, the lawyers focus on the small details and lose sight of the larger goals. At Streetman Law, we are different. We relish making those lawyers pay for their careless mistakes and undisciplined approach. At the end of the day, those lawyers may not care as long as they are able to generate a massive fee, but we know that you do care about results and that you cannot afford to waste your hard-earned money on lawyer games. We hope you will find us to be a breath of fresh air.
Collections
Streetman Law can help you collect all kinds of debts. We have extensive experience using creditors’ processes to find and take assets from debtors who refuse to pay even though they have the means. We employ the most sophisticated technology available to find debtors’ assets. Once we find the assets, we move quickly to take them before the debtor is even aware of what is happening. However, not every debtor is collectible. We pride ourselves on giving our clients an honest and thorough evaluation of debtors. If a debtor does not have any assets, it makes no sense for our clients to throw good money after bad pursuing the debtor, and we give our clients our honest evaluation. This often results in the client deciding not to pursue the debtor at that time, which results in a much lower fee for us at that time, but we view our client relationships as long-term partnerships. We always remind our clients that although a debtor may not have assets now, the situation could be different in 5 or 10 years. We calendar ongoing collections matters for regular follow-up at the client’s desired frequency.
Construction
Streetman Law regularly advises owners, contractors, and subcontractors on all aspects of the construction business. We have helped numerous contractors apply for and obtain their required contractor licenses, both locally and at the state level. We have helped contractors and owners draft and negotiate construction contracts. We typically recommend that they use a form contract with certain proprietary modifications that we have developed over the years. This saves our clients money while still fully protecting them. Mr. Streetman used to defend construction sureties from payment and performance bond claims. Mr. Streetman has written extensively on the subject and has spoken at many conferences for the surety industry, educating claims people and underwriters about best practices and common pitfalls. Despite his efforts, he still regularly sees fundamental mistakes. He now uses his expertise to help owners make proper, enforceable performance bond claims and negotiate takeover and completion agreements where appropriate. He also uses his expertise to help subcontractors make their payment claims in a form that gets them paid quickly. If the sureties decide not to play by the rules, Streetman Law knows the rule book backward and forward and will hold them to it. Streetman Law is fully familiar with the complicated realm of construction liens. Streetman Law offers flat-fee (all expenses included) construction liens for $250. We do this as a service to contractors and subcontractors because we enjoy helping them get paid for a job well done. Mr. Streetman has successfully represented homeowners against their builders for construction defects and building code violations, even in the face of the egregious and unfair contracts most builders make new home buyers sign. Streetman Law also handles delay and impact claims and Mr. Streetman has hands-on experience taking those claims on hundred million dollar projects to trial. Streetman Law, working closely with consultants, leverages technology to handle the massive volume of documents involved in construction projects of that size.
Landlord-Tenant
Streetman Law represents commercial and residential landlords in all aspects of their business. Streetman Law can prepare a Lease for you that you can re-use over and over. This saves you money. Streetman Law can help you evaluate and determine your unique needs and will tweak your Lease to address those needs. Many landlords and even lawyers overlook the value of such individual attention, but Streetman Law can help you quickly identify areas of concern. It will always be your choice whether to address them by changing your Lease. Often, however, Mr. Streetman has found his best clients are those landlords who wanted to skip a review and customization of a form Lease to save money on the front end only to end up spending 10 times as much on a lawsuit on the back end. When it comes time to evict a problem tenant, let Streetman Law help you through the process from start to finish. The county judges, who are charged with exclusive jurisdiction in possession (eviction) actions, are extremely protective of tenant rights. Sometimes even when a tenant does not show up at all to defend the lawsuit, the judge will still reject the landlord’s lawsuit on a technicality. This sets the landlord back as much as 6-8 weeks or more. It is extremely frustrating to have a tenant that is not paying rent and to have a technicality preventing you from even being able to rent the premises to a paying tenant. Again, the landlords who have tried to handle possession actions on their own and been burned by a technicality have become some of Mr. Streetman’s best clients.
Homeowner and Condominium Associations
Streetman Law represents Homeowner and Condominium Associations, primarily to collect unpaid dues and assessments. Because of the unique fiscal demands facing most Homeowner and Condominium Associations, Streetman Law works closely with the Associations to obtain payment of attorney fees directly from the delinquent owner. After all, it is really the owner’s fault that the Association and Streetman Law had to go to all the trouble just to get the owner to pay his or her fair share. If the owner steadfastly refuses to pay until the bitter end, Streetman Law is well-versed in lien foreclosure and will put their property up for sale at judicial auction.
Non-Profits
Streetman Law works closely with several local and national non-profits in various capacities. Mr. Streetman serves on the boards of Wheels of Success, Inc., Support Our Marines, Inc., and other local non-profits. He is President of The Founders Society, which is a budding non-profit of 6 enterprising young professionals that is working hard to build a reputation of community involvement and charity in the Tampa Bay area. Mr. Streetman also works closely with The Federalist Society on both a national and local level. As a result of his involvement, Mr. Streetman’s opinion on Governor Crist’s nominations to the Florida Supreme Court has been sought out and featured in news outlets throughout Florida.
Child Custody
Florida’s child custody guidelines changed on October 1, 2008. The changes benefit fathers, who have often received the short end of the stick even though the system was not supposed to favor either parent. As a result, many fathers have decided to ask the courts to modify their existing custody/visitation judgments. Streetman Law took a child custody case to trial in Hillsborough County, Florida in August 2008 and won full residential custody for the father even though the father had only been involved in his daughter’s life for 1 year prior to the trial. And that was before the changes in the law. Let Streetman Law help you get the time you deserve with your family.
Trial
Streetman Law loves nothing more than taking cases to trial. Our trial philosophy is to relentlessly prepare ourselves, our evidence, our witnesses, and our clients for battle. Trial is truly a pitched battle. Surprise attacks and misdirection are the stuff of Perry Mason and Matlock but are rarely seen in today’s courtrooms. However, Streetman Law plays its cards close to the vest to orchestrate the closest thing to surprise attacks that you can see in twenty-first century courtrooms. Streetman Law has employed its philosophy to great effect in several trials, from confronting opposing counsel with his own recorded statements in another case in another jurisdiction that directly contradicted the representations he was making to the judge, to having the mother’s boyfriend arrested on the stand, on a warrant issued only a couple of days earlier, during a child custody case in which Streetman Law represented the father. Despite Streetman Law’s deep enthusiasm for trial, we understand that trial is prohibitively expensive for most people and we work hard to help our clients achieve justice without the need for a costly trial.