Charles R. Levin
Principal

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Chuck Levin began his career as an anti-trust lawyer, first at the Federal Trade Commission and then at a private law firm, both in Washington, D.C. He then reentered government as a lawyer advising on federal education grants and served briefly in a staff position on the President's taskforce to study Medicaid and related health programs.  

Returning to Massachusetts, Mr. Levin became Corporate Counsel at Healthco, a healthcare conglomerate.  After a period of private practice following his time at Healthco, he became a partner at Aresty, Levin, Orenstein & Shafner in Boston, a law firm concentrating in financial, investment and business matters.

In the early 1990’s, Mr. Levin began Levin Business Law Services (LBLS). Today, LBLS provides small and mid-sized companies with an array of business legal services from financing and contracts to litigation advice and real estate law.

Typical Matters Handled:

General Representation - Represented various businesses in such construction, commercial printing, store fixtures and electronic machine manufacturing, providing a range of business, advisory, financial, contract and litigation services.

Acquisitions - Handled acquisitions of various businesses, including successfully arranging for a client to acquire a distressed manufacturer facing imminent bank foreclosure. 

Lending - Represented clients in numerous lending situations, including the negotiation, documentation and closing of asset-based and other collateralized bank loans. 

Executive Employee Situations - Successfully structured the negotiation of key management employees who left their employer voluntarily. In each case, the employee-client had minimal bargaining power and could not afford to go to court. Results included obtaining favorable severance terms, obtaining cash payment of substantial stock options, modification of stock options (consistent with multiple security law restrictions) to permit exercise of options, modification of non-competition covenant and post-employment invention agreements to allow employee to enter into related business field.  

Real Estate - Handled acquisitions and sales of important business parcels, including raw land.  Set up strategy to swap large tract of severely, environmentally-impacted, raw land in exchange for developable town-owned parcel. The strategy required inventorying municipal agencies and their board members, identifying their respective interests, and devising a proposal designed to accommodate the multiple interests involved.

Tax - Prepared proposal to convert client's sales force from employee status to independent contractor status. Conversion of sales force was designed to result in: 1.) improvement of client's bottom-line performance 12-15% by avoidance of tax withholding and other payments; 2.) avoidance of possible civil and criminal penalties; 3.) avoidance of multiple state qualifications to do business; and 4.) avoidance of tort liability for acts of sales force.  

Litigation Planning - Represented client to enforce high six-figure claim on defaulted promissory note; successfully planned litigation strategy to pierce real estate trust to hold both general partnership and each individual partner liable for the entire debt; analyzed $100,000,000 real estate portfolio and related creditor proceedings to verify probability of collectability; successfully opposed attempts in partnership bankruptcy reorganization to avoid inclusion and liquidation of individual partners' assets as part of bankrupt estate to pay other general creditors.  

Negotiations - Handled numerous matters where the key issue was to locate points of leverage as a basis for effective bargaining and dispute resolution.