Steve Glaser, founder of Glaser Business Law, LLC, has represented business owners for more than 2 decades, helping them address their business and corporate legal issues. Having worked at law firms of various sizes, including some of the largest and most highly respected corporate firms in Wisconsin, Steve was exposed to a wide variety of legal issues and many approaches to solving them. He worked with businesses of all sizes, from “Main Street” businesses to Fortune 50 companies with billions of dollars of sales, working on thousands of transactions over the past two decades. As a result, Glaser Business Law has a broad range of experience, not only with respect to legal issues, but more importantly, with handling delicate and complex transactions and negotiations and the many approaches to getting deals done, solving problems and accomplishing a client’s goals.
A Different Approach
A long-time client responded as follows when asked why they chose Steve and GBL to be their attorney: “You help me sleep at night knowing that someone is worrying about my legal issues, anticipating what I need to do to address them and helping me figure out a plan. You ask me about legal issues that face my business and industry before I have had a chance to think about them and are always looking for creative solutions to those problems. Your insight and experience help me grow my business.”
GBL’s mission statement is just that simple – “Helping Business Owners Sleep at Night”
One of the reasons for the creation of Glaser Business Law, LLC was the fact that Steve found that many law firms were reluctant to embrace this approach to the practice of law, focusing instead on “legal expertise” as the primary, if not sole, measuring stick. After years of working with business owners, Steve noticed a recurring theme – his clients were not looking for a memo restating the issue and setting forth an “academic” treatment of all of the things that could go wrong, along with 7 pages of footnotes and case citations, rather they were looking for practical advice and a suggestion as to how to solve the problem, with an appreciation of the fact that the advice would impact the business and its stakeholders, from the owners to the customers to the employees and their families. They did not want to hear “no” twenty seven times with a lengthy description of the many things that could go wrong – and, ultimately, no suggestion as to what to do – they want someone to guide them along the path to achieve their objectives.
Unfortunately, although many attorneys understand this, the structure of many firms with various tiers of attorneys (clerks, associates, junior partners, senior partners, of counsel, etc.) discourages such an approach as there is a mandate to utilize (and train) younger attorneys, many of whom will be gone in a couple of years. As a result, many attorneys face an uphill battle in representing his or her clients in the manner the client desire, leading to a dilemma – conform to the structure of a large organization with multiple tiers and struggle to meet client needs or find a place to do it differently.
Although there are many clients well served by the large firm model, many privately held businesses want more – they want a more considered and thoughtful representation that is enabled by the “compressed” management structure in most privately held business. As a result, Steve is trying to do things a bit differently through Glaser Business Law. He believes that not only can a firm provide top-notch legal advice, but it can do it in a practical manner while understanding the need to help the business owner understand to process and feel some sense of security because someone else cares about their problems.
Steve cut his teeth at the “big” firms – his experience includes working on transactions involving hundreds of millions of dollars – so he has the background and experience. However, he found that he much preferred working directly with business owners and their key management on a strategic and value added basis. So, Steve made the leap and started Glaser Business Law.