During the covid-19 pandemic, our firm faced all the same challenges as our clients, while we worked to assist them in navigating the changes and challenges brought on by the pandemic. We’re proud that we were able to continue delivering a high level of service to our clients throughout 2020.
Firm Updates
During the past year, we also made significant changes at our firm.
We Now Have Client Portals and Are 100% Cloud
“Re-Platfoming” happened here too. In the fall of 2020, we migrated to a new practice management software platform after many years. The new program is entirely cloud based, with user-friendly client features such as full Client Portals and integrated electronic document signing.
Towards the end of last year, we migrated entirely off our own servers to a 100% Microsoft cloud environment. While these migrations are always a project, it went fairly smoothly without interruption for our firm or clients. It provides a highly-secure and flexible environment for us and our clients going forward.
We Launched A Refreshed AdishianLaw.com
We are excited to announce that in late 2020, after nearly six months of work, the new www.AdishianLaw.com website went live! Our goals were to (1) modernize the navigation and flow to make it easier to find content and (2) update the look and feel. We invite you to browse around, let us know how we did and connect with us if you have any suggestions.
Practice Update
Our practice is now heavily focused on advising clients and leading transactions in the areas of business, real estate and employment. Over the past year, our firm has been very active in sell-side M&A assignments and financing transactions. We expect the M&A activity to continue at a high rate as baby boomers retire or look to exit over the next decade, private equity funds sit on record amounts of cash and interest rates on cash remain close to zero. Keep an eye out for highlighted transactions in upcoming newsletters.
If you happen to have a legal matter outside our practice areas, we can often assist through our referral network of trusted attorneys.
Observations From The Pandemic
“It is not about avoiding all crises, because you cannot”
There is a quote that I’m fond of that is attributed to a former Nestle CEO: “We have crises and all that. My job is not to manage the crisis. My job is to make sure we have the capabilities of mastering them.”
From its inception, the pandemic created a lot of uncertainty and chaos (and nobody knows what the delta or other variants may bring). Our clients who navigated the pandemic most successfully embraced the truth of the above quote and acted upon it. They focused on marshalling the necessary resources — legal, financial, operational — and rapidly adapting their business processes to weather the storm and be prepared when the pandemic abated.
“The pandemic highlighted enterprise financial fragility”
The pandemic put a renewed emphasis on healthy, liquid balance sheets. From late March 2020 through July 2020 a broad range of businesses were partially or completely shut down, some industry shutdowns lasted much, much longer. The health crises became a financial crisis for many firms across the country, leading to business failures or severely weakened businesses. Companies and organizations with a culture of healthy cash balances, conservative leverage and low cost operations were better able to survive the pandemic.
The time to instill and maintain this culture is before the (next) crisis.
“For investors and entrepreneurs the rate of change appears to be accelerating, and what seemed reliable became risky”
A few examples…. For many years, residential real estate was seen as one of the safest, most reliable ways to build wealth. During the pandemic, vacancies spiked and many tenants couldn’t or didn’t pay rent. Prior to the pandemic, commercial real estate was one of the best performing asset classes. During the pandemic, it was very painful to be a shopping center or commercial real estate owner. Separate from the pandemic, minor league baseball was always viewed as a safe haven for nearly a century due to its alignment with Major League Baseball. In 2020, MLB dropped forty teams from affiliation. Some of these changes appear relatively short term while some appear permanent.
Entrepreneuring has always been risky and the old saying, “the only constant is change” is even more true today. The right team of advisors can help you de-risk your operations, prepare for the next change and take advantage of it when it comes.
We hope that you have been able to stay healthy and safe during the pandemic and continue to do so during the reopening.
We look forward to brighter days ahead which we are confident will bring their own challenges. We’ll be here for you.