Our firm has been assisting cooperatives for over 25 years.  Our firm represents a wide variety of cooperatives:

• Electric cooperatives
• Telephone cooperatives 
• Worker cooperatives
• Grocery cooperatives
• Wholesale cooperatives
• Agricultural cooperatives
• Software cooperatives

Our cooperative clients range in size from cooperatives to 4 members to those with over 100,000 members. We represent cooperatives across the United States.

Our experience has been that all cooperatives generally face similar types of issues and that our extensive experience benefits us greatly in providing counsel. We perform a wide variety of services for cooperatives, including cooperative formation, drafting bylaws and member agreements, negotiating contracts with vendors and suppliers, regulatory compliance, securities issues, cooperative conversions, formation of cooperative subsidiaries, and assisting with governance issues. We also provide cooperative tax advice to our diverse set of cooperative clients.

For those considering forming a cooperative, our services include educating potential members to explain how cooperatives work, assisting with financing and capitalization issues, assisting with choice of business entity and state of organization, and the many other issues encountered by new cooperatives.

If you currently own a business and are interested in converting it to a cooperative (such as a worker cooperative or a supply cooperative), we can offer guidance on the many issues involved with conversion, including legal requirements, tax issues, treatment of existing assets, use of consulting or management agreements for owners, and management and governance issues.

For more information on the steps involved in forming a cooperative, please read our Guide to Forming a Cooperative. For information on the legal documents required for forming a cooperative, please read Forming a Cooperative – Legal Documents.