PRACTICE AREAS
Administrative Law
We represent clients in a broad range of agency and court litigation involving challenges to federal and state government policies, rules, and regulations. We also defend clients in a wide variety of enforcement actions involving federal and state regulations. Our lawyers also have substantial experience with petitions for review to, and appeals from, agency action. Our in-depth understanding of the government regulatory process enables us to develop strategies and solutions consistent with the business objectives of our clients.
Antitrust Law
We represent clients in a broad range of agency and court litigation involving challenges to federal and state government policies, rules, and regulations. We also defend clients in a wide variety of enforcement actions involving federal and state regulations. Our lawyers also have substantial experience with petitions for review to, and appeals from, agency action.
We represent clients in connection with compliance, civil federal and state antitrust investigations, enforcement actions, and in matters in which our clients seek enforcement actions against others. Our experience includes allegations of violations of the Sherman Act, the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA), and other laws addressing anti-competitive practices.
We also have extensive experience in handling all antitrust aspects of acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures. We are experienced in evaluating potential antitrust risks in light of appropriate client objectives.
Corporate Law
We offer our clients practical experience and legal knowledge in a variety of business and corporate matters, including general corporate advice, financial services, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, corporate governance, and project finance. We also regularly work with attorneys in the firm’s other practice areas, including Real Estate, Antitrust, Labor and Employment, and Litigation to contribute to matters when needed. Our clients range from closely held family businesses to multinational corporations in myriad industries, such as telecommunications, health care, manufacturing, and transportation.
We have extensive experience in representing buyers and sellers in acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures. Our mergers and acquisitions practice often draws upon the significant experience of our Administrative Law, Health Law, and Antitrust Law Departments. We advise public and private companies and their directors and officers, on a variety of corporate governance issues, including developing corporate governance policies, board committee charters, codes of conduct, and other corporate programs and policies. We render our corporate law services with an overall understanding of the shifting industry forces that may stand in the way of a transaction, and we offer creative solutions to achieve our clients’ goals in a compliant and efficient manner.
Employment Law
We have a sophisticated employment law practice, advising and representing companies and executives on important matters during their entire life cycle. From a counseling standpoint, we help successfully guide our clients through the thicket of governmental regulations and prevailing law concerning their employment contracts and handbooks, and related legal and contractual obligations. We also assist clients in negotiating high-level employment contracts and/or the termination or separation of employment. We are regularly chosen to handle sensitive matters involving restrictive covenants, such as non-compete and non-solicit provisions, and any resulting injunction or temporary restraining order proceedings. Our clients also hire us to handle high-profile discrimination, harassment, whistle-blower and retaliation claims throughout the country, including under Title VII and its state law equivalents, all the way through trial and arbitration, if necessary.
We are also regularly retained to handle crisis management and internal investigations on behalf of private and public companies and their boards of directors. And when it matters most, our trial lawyers have litigated employment disputes, including class actions, in state and federal courts, before arbitration panels, OSHA, and the EEOC, and its city and state counterparts.
In addition, a significant portion of our practice is devoted to assisting employers in human relations and personnel matters. We have counseled employers in the development and implementation of handbooks, as well as a variety of personnel policies and procedures such as disciplinary policies, policies concerning reasonable accommodation of handicapped employees, drug and alcohol testing programs, family and medical leave policies, and affirmative action plans.
Estate Planning
Our Estate Planning and Probate Department attorneys focus on assisting clients with protecting and managing their estates both during life and after death. Our attorneys use their extensive experience to assist clients, including individuals, fiduciaries, and non-profit entities, in attaining their goals. Our practice involves lifetime tax and business planning for individuals and estate and trust administration. Although the focus of the practice is on estate planning and probate, it is our belief that this practice includes more than properly drafting and administering wills and trust agreements. Therefore, we offer extensive experience in business planning for owners of closely held businesses, real estate transactions, and estate planning. In addition, we work with clients to develop and implement lifetime gift programs, insurance programs, and charitable giving programs appropriate to the clients' desires, needs, and resources.
Estate administration is a major part of our practice. We advise estates of all sizes, and counsel personal representatives. In addition, the firm advises fiduciaries on business issues affecting estates and trusts. We have a broad array of knowledge in all facets of business planning, estate planning, and administration. It is our goal to satisfy not only our clients’ concerns about the deposition of their assets, but the well-being of their families.
Family Law
Issues that arise in the practice of family law can be complicated and often entail personal matters of a very sensitive nature. The attorneys in our Family Law Department combine advocacy with sensitivity for the emotional issues typically involved.
We provide legal counsel and advice to clients concerning divorce, annulment, pre- and post-nuptial agreements, child support, property division, alimony, custody and visitation, paternity, guardianship, and adoption issues. The full capacity of our firm is also available to provide support to clients on related personal matters that often arise in family law matters. For example, estate planning issues and the transfer of real estate often need to be addressed as the result of major changes in personal and family circumstances.
Health Law
We serve a wide variety of health care providers, including physicians, proprietary and not-for-profit hospitals; skilled nursing, assisted living and long-term care facilities; and ambulatory and other specialty facilities. Not only do heath care providers require sound legal advice to comply with the law, they also require practical, focused, and innovative, legal counsel regarding their business. Our Health Law attorneys are entrepreneurially focused and endeavor to provide our clients with counsel and experience to meet their needs.
We regularly represent hospitals and hospital systems. We also have a history of serving provider networks, skilled nursing facilities, assisted and long-term care facilities and ambulatory and other special facilities. Our Health Law attorneys also have experience in managed care payors. Further, we have represented providers and managed their networks in connection with managed care contracting and regulatory matters.
In today’s health care environment, providers constantly face challenges that could impact their operations including with respect to accreditation and certification, reimbursement, and federal and state regulatory action. We have substantial experience in helping providers navigate these issues. We also regularly provide legal advice to physician groups and physicians. We perform practice formation, consolidation, and separation, and prepare and review the spectrum of physician community and are intimately knowledgeable about the business and legal aspects of physician practices. We understand the complexities of our clients’ organizations. Our clients have called on us not only for legal services in connection with health care law matters, but also for advice in matters of antitrust, labor and employment, immigration, administrative law, and real estate.
Immigration Law
The lawyers in our Immigration Law Department focus on all aspects of immigration law, specifically providing counsel to both individuals and domestic and multinational corporations. As the pool for technical talent becomes more global, business leaders must be able to draw upon this talent in order to complete domestically and globally. We have extensive experience in providing immigration counseling for businesses regarding the temporary and permanent employment of foreign employees in the United States, and strategic planning for the employment of personnel worldwide. As regulations from the Department of Homeland Security continue to evolve, our attorneys assist our clients in long- and short-term planning.
Our immigration experience incorporates a broad range of matters, including assisting employers and individuals in acquiring proper work authorization, petitioning for U.S. nonimmigrant (temporary) and immigrant (permanent) visas; ensuring timely applications for extensions for temporary visa holders; providing short-and long-range immigration planning for employers and employees, coordination of immigration and executive relocation policies/strategies; criminal immigration matters, post-green card strategy for foreign national employees in the United States; employment verification policies, audits and development of risk management strategies and maintenance of public access files; acquisition of U.S. Passports; training company human resource professionals; and hiring and termination of foreign national employees within and outside the United States.
International Law
Internationalization of a firm’s capabilities is critical to its success in today’s global marketplace. Clients are constantly demanding integrated global advice on a variety of issues. Zumpano Patricios currently has a total of 20 locations in 13 countries, ranging from the United States to Europe, the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Asia. Its significant international footprint equips Zumpano Patricios to serve its clients across the globe.
True to its philosophy of “New Globalism,” Zumpano Patricios does not seek to take market share from other law firms in their foreign relevant markets. Rather, Zumpano Patricios implements a foreign satellite office model that focuses on co-counseling with established law firms in order to effectively service the stream of commerce that exists between nations.
In order to bring added efficiencies to the model and consistent with certain principles that are fundamental to it—such as those of sharing and humility—Zumpano Patricios actually establishes a Satellite Office within the other’s premises. All of the Satellite Offices are being aligned through common business identifiers (i.e. signage, business cards, letterhead), an integrated telecommunication system, integrated electronic communications systems, and the physical presence of Zumpano Patricios Attorney Coordinators.
Zumpano Patricios’s Attorney Coordinators exclusively provide administrative and operational services relevant to the efficient implementation of the Zumpano Patricios model, Attorney Coordinators staff legal matters and coordinate the operations of Zumpano Patricios and the foreign firm in which the applicable Satellite Offices are located. The result—both firms jointly partake in the matter and provides the operational efficiencies that clients crave in the international legal world.
The model is not a network because all of the Satellite Offices are operationally integrated, Zumpano Patricios has a physical presence in each of its satellite offices, and both firms respectively enjoy real-time financial outcome together on a per matter basis, rather than waiting for one to refer a matter to the other. Lastly, the model varies from traditional “bricks and mortar” model whereby the goal would otherwise be to usurp marker share in the applicable foreign country. Rather than taking market share in the applicable foreign country. Rather than taking market share from foreign law firms, we add it. Because Zumpano Patricios has redefined the target market as the commerce that exists between nations, rather than within nations, its international office model focuses on co-counseling with prominent firms in order to capture and efficiently service that commerce.
Zumpano Patricios implements its international satellite office model through formal co-counseling agreements that are structured and disclosed in accordance with the Rules of Professional Conduct Regulating the Florida Bar.
Litigation and Trial Work
The lawyers in our Litigation Department have a track record of successfully resolving our clients' disputes at every level of litigation, including through trial. We are retained by our clients, including individuals and private and public companies, both defendant and plaintiff, to handle their most important and complex matters. We are both thought-leaders in the substantive areas of practice which we provide, and zealous litigators, advocates, and trial attorneys. Our senior litigators having tried dozens of cases, and unlike many of our peers, we actually try cases to verdict, judgment or award, throughout South Florida, New York, and the country. Our proven track record of success speaks for itself. We also help shape the law in the states in which we practice through a successful appellate practice, and we are proud that trial and appellate courts have decided that our attorneys’ matters involve novel issues and have published their opinions about our cases.
Our clients’ goals are of paramount importance to us. As counselors first, we consider all the options, first evaluating whether litigation can be avoided through alternative measures. We develop a winning litigation strategy with our clients at the outset, and then strive to put our clients in the best leveraged position at every stage in the litigation process for them to decide whether to settle on favorable terms, or try the case.
We also understand that our clients are more likely to obtain optimal results if we are prepared to try the case successfully if necessary-- and the other side to the dispute knows it. Our litigation team architects our cases, implements our strategies, and strives to maximize client outcomes. We are backed by an array of capabilities and resources, which allows us to represent clients across borders, industries, and practice areas. We utilize state-of-the-art technology to help us better serve our clients.
The substantive areas of the law that our litigators are well-versed in include:
-
Breach of Contract
-
Business Dispute and Torts
-
Commercial disputes
-
Director and Officer Litigation
-
Employment, including restrictive covenants and injunction matters
-
Family Office Disputes
-
Financial services (including FINRA arbitration)
-
Gaming and Sports Betting
-
Harassment, Discrimination and Retaliation Claims
-
Intellectual Property including Copyright
-
Managed Care
-
Partnership Disputes
-
Real Estate and Construction
-
Securities Fraud Litigation and Class Actions
-
“White Collar” Regulatory/Enforcement and Investigatory matters, involving the SEC, CFTC, DOJ and FINRA.
Real Estate Law
Our Real Estate Department has experience with virtually every kind of legal matter that arises with respect to real estate. Our experience includes sales and purchases, real property litigation, and zoning and land use planning.
We work with our clients to assist them in responding to the challenges and opportunities of the real estate industry, often through innovative and sophisticated approaches that meet client requirements for practical and cost-effective solutions.
We are experienced in all phases of the acquisition process, from negotiation of letter of intent and purchase and sale agreements through project completion and permanent finance. Our acquisition and development work includes advice on governmental regulatory matters, zoning matters and environmental issues. We also have extensive experience in leasing transactions. We are experienced landlords and tenants in all types of office, retail and industrial leasing transactions. We are experienced in documenting issues involving indemnities, subrogation, subordination, insurance, condemnation provisions, CAM and operating expense pass-through provisions and rental escalation clauses.
Securities Law
The lawyers in our securities department provide a full range of services, from transactional advice and support, to internal investigations, to defense and guidance during civil and/or criminal investigations, and to vigorous litigation in self-regulatory, and administrative, civil, and criminal enforcement proceedings.
We assist our clients with compliance issues in the offer and sale of all types of securities. This work includes drafting and filing regulatory and disclosure documents, and negotiating and drafting the accompanying contractual arrangements. We regularly assist clients in responding to direct inquiries from federal and state regulators. If needed, we also provide clients as seamless transition to the defense of their practices.
We assist clients with developing a thorough understanding of the factual and legal terrain applicable to pertinent issues. We combine a comprehensive understanding of the regulatory landscape with an appreciation of our clients’ businesses and assist our clients with anticipating trends and developments.
White Collar and Regulatory Enforcement Practice
We have substantial experience defending corporations and executives in connection with regulatory investigations. In today’s legal environment, being able to call on attorneys with breadth and depth in white collar matters, including investigations, testimony, trials and appeals, is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Businesses and the people who lead them may find themselves witnesses, subjects, and even targets of domestic investigations in such diverse areas as securities, antitrust, financial services, governmental contracting, tax, import/export, banking, insurance, and healthcare. We vigorously represent clients who are involved in investigations or enforcement proceedings led by regulators and agencies such as the SEC, CFTC, FINRA, and the DOJ, along with local regulators in the securities and gaming space. We are also called upon to conduct corporate internal investigations to allow our clients to get to the bottom of issues involving possible violations of law and/or policy.