We take fewer matters than most firms our size, and we take them further. Each engagement is led by a partner from the first meeting to the final order.
Argument is the last step of preparation, never the first.
I. Commercial Litigation
Business disputes are rarely about the money alone; they are about reputations, relationships, and the continuity of enterprises built over decades. We try contract, partnership, and business-tort matters before the state and federal courts of South Carolina, and we prepare every case as though a jury will hear it. That is precisely why so few of ours ever need one.
Representative matters
Defended a family-owned maritime logistics company in a $14 million breach-of-contract action; resolved on the eve of trial for a fraction of the claim.
Secured dissolution and accounting remedies for the minority partner of a King Street hospitality group.
Obtained summary judgment for a regional contractor accused of tortious interference in a public-works bid.
II. Estates & Trusts
A well-drafted estate plan is an act of clarity performed for people who will read it in grief. We prepare wills, revocable and irrevocable trusts, and succession plans for families whose holdings include operating businesses, historic properties, and land held for generations. When the time comes, we administer those instruments faithfully and defend them when contested.
Representative matters
Designed a generation-skipping trust structure preserving a 640-acre Wadmalaw Island farm within a single family line.
Served as counsel to the personal representative of an estate comprising three operating companies and property in four states.
Successfully defended a contested 2009 will against undue-influence claims in Charleston County probate court.
III. Real Estate Law
In a city where a deed may recite a chain of title older than the Republic, real property work rewards patience and punishes assumption. We handle acquisitions, dispositions, easements, and title disputes for commercial and historic residential property throughout the Lowcountry, with particular depth in Board of Architectural Review and preservation-easement matters.
Representative matters
Closed the $22 million acquisition and preservation easement of a Meeting Street commercial block.
Quieted title to heirs’ property on Johns Island, uniting fourteen family claimants under a single recorded deed.
Represented a boutique hotel developer before the Board of Architectural Review through approval and construction.
IV. Corporate Counsel
Closely held companies deserve counsel who know the shareholders by name. We serve as outside general counsel to family businesses, physician groups, and founder-led firms: entity formation and governance, shareholder agreements, acquisitions and sales, and the quiet, steady work of keeping a company’s affairs in order year after year.
Representative matters
Guided the sale of a third-generation building-supply company to a regional acquirer, preserving employment terms for its 85 staff.
Restructured governance for a twelve-physician specialty practice ahead of a hospital-system affiliation.
Serve as standing outside counsel to eleven Lowcountry companies with combined revenues above $200 million.
V. Employment Law
We counsel employers on the full arc of the employment relationship: hiring, handbooks, restrictive covenants, separations, and the disputes that follow when any of these go wrong. Our clients call before the problem, not after it; most of our best work never becomes a case caption.
Representative matters
Enforced non-solicitation covenants against a departing executive team in expedited injunction proceedings.
Defended a hospitality group through a Department of Labor wage-and-hour audit without penalty.
Drafted executive employment and deferred-compensation agreements for a founder transition at a coastal engineering firm.
VI. Appellate Advocacy
Appeals are an exercise in distillation: a record of thousands of pages reduced to the two or three questions on which the law actually turns. Our attorneys brief and argue before the South Carolina Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of South Carolina, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, both in our own matters and as engaged appellate counsel for trial firms.
Representative matters
Won reversal in the Supreme Court of South Carolina on the interpretation of a marsh-front boundary statute.
Preserved a $6.2 million verdict on appeal to the Fourth Circuit as retained appellate counsel.
Briefed amicus curiae for a statewide trade association in a landmark restrictive-covenant appeal.
Begin the conversation
Is your matter among these? Let us hear it.
If your question falls between our disciplines, we will say so plainly, and refer you to counsel we would hire ourselves.
