Areas of Practice

George Law Offices can offer legal services in:

Corporate, Business, and Not-for-Profit Law
Alternate Dispute Resolution
Regulatory, Administrative, and International law
Governance, Risk, and Compliance advising
Ongoing Legal Counsel and other areas
Licenses


Corporate, Business, and Not-for-Profit Law
We have advised Sole Proprietors, for-profit business entities, and not-for-profit corporations and associations in Canada and the United States, as well as Limited Liability Companies (LLCs).  

Our “for-profit” representations have included:

  • Advising on initial establishment with choice of entity and financing;
  • Conducting due diligence on counterparties via regulatory filings, open-source and online research, and word of mouth;
  • Drafting non-disclosure agreements and Board of Directors’ resolutions;
  • Drafting and negotiating Cloud contracts and commercial leases;
  • Contacting and negotiating with talent agents and Counsel for demo-shopping (music) and go-see visits (modeling);
  • Drafting, negotiation, and review and revision of production contracts, management agreements, venue contracts and related deal papers;
  • Filing and advising on copyrights and other intellectual property matters, and Artist dealings with Performing Rights Organizations;
  • Advising on crises and dispute resolution;
  • Serving as In-house Counsel for an IT consultancy;
  • Providing general ongoing advice and counsel;

Not-for profit” entities acting through their founders, boards, and executive directors have also sought out and retained our services to secure their status as registered not-for-profit entities under the laws of Canada (through the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency and in accordance with the Income Tax Act, as amended), and in the United States (through 26 United States Code, §501, as amended, within the Internal Revenue Code).  Our not-for-profit clientele have included a healthcare charity, a community group, an alumni association, a green cooperative, and a family foundation.  

Tell us, what can we do for you today in your company, other business entity, or not-for-profit corporation?


Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR)
In both Canada and the United States, we have settled many business and personal disputes out of court, resolved regulatory and administrative charges at Boards and Tribunals, and negotiated pleas to criminal charges without the need for a full trial.

Stemming from our litigation successes in several Superior Courts in Ontario, Canada, and within several New Jersey and New York state courts, and other client representations before:

  • the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Tribunal, in Ottawa, Canada;
  • the Zoning and Planning Board of the City of Englewood, in New Jersey, U.S.A.;
  • the Environmental Control Board of the State of New York, in the borough of Queens, U.S.A.;

We are well aware of the costs, time, and aggravations to be saved.  Our alternate dispute resolution experiences have included work terminations, hostile work environments, alleged breach of contract, criminal court, landlord and tenant disputes, and several other areas.
Tell us, which major or minor dispute of yours, just does not want to go away?


Regulatory, Administrative, and International law
We have solid experience in formulating legislative, regulatory, and administrative law and policy by developing and delivering comprehensive strategies and initiatives to help regulators make, manage, uniformly apply and mainstream principles, guidelines, standards and procedures; with work including:

  • Researching, comparing, and contrasting wetlands sanctions policy across the five states of Alabama, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, and Pennsylvania for a Professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), as a basis to advise and assist the state of Virginia on its own workable and outcomes-based wetlands sanctions policy modifications;
  • Working in the Office of Bond Counsel for New Jersey municipalities (Cherry Hill, Cinnaminson, Evesham, Palmyra), and independent state agencies (The Garden State Preservation Trust, The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency), to perform research and advise on their requirements in Public / Municipal Finance, and assist in preparing Offering Memoranda;
  • Working on a law firm, Government Affairs team, that assisted elected officials, policy advisors, bureaucrats, and executive management, as Counsel to the New Jersey State Senate in Trenton, New Jersey to review and advise on proponent responses to Request for Proposal to provide consulting services to New Jersey entities on critical infrastructure and essential government services; counseling and advising on the legal and other implications of topical regulatory, legislative, and policy matters and options on which the New Jersey senate required occasional assistance; and hosting meetings, with and without New Jersey legislators present, involving business leaders and concerned citizens for high-level and tactful advocacy, concerns resolution and issues management, stakeholder development or informal consultations, and lobbying;
  • Conducting regulatory compliance analyses of applications to build, launch and operate satellites; performing satellite-specific, national security law (export regulations, arms control regulations, committee on foreign investment in the United States), general communications law, and First Amendment rights (free speech) research as directed; and drafting proposed Orders at the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), International Bureau, Satellite Policy Branch;
  • Publishing a peer-reviewed paper on the interplay of national security and environmental law and policy, demonstrating the high interdependence of these two expanding fields in an era of climate change, carbon trading, and sea level rise;
  • Planning, designing, and conducting a 2012 healthcare, senior care, and home care program comprehensive legal, policy, fiscal, and technical review after assembling a team of 25 multidisciplinary George Law Offices professionals who worked out of Ottawa, Owen Sound, and Mississauga in Ontario, as well as California and Florida in the United States, Mr. George –
    • brought people together with diversity and empowerment, while facilitating communications and motivating them to build a collaborative environment for the PhDs, MBAs, Masters’ degree holders, economists and statisticians, lawyers and paralegals, law students, an M.D. and registered nurses of varied specialties, web and graphic designers, sociologists and computer scientists, and Undergraduates in political science, public policy, international development, and human rights on the project team;
    • maintained 2-way client communications, responded to client queries, interim regulatory and policy changes, and staff emergencies, and divided the team into 5 cross-disciplinary, operational sub-cells for: fiscal impact, medical aspects, legal analysis, technical analysis, and human resources aspects;
    • led and coordinated visits to 12 sites (up to 3 hours distant from our downtown Ottawa offices), met and spoke with 40+ program Managers, reviewed mandates, program literature, front-line and supporting operations, and law, and assessed voluminous government statistics, digested qualitative and quantitative data from our customized surveys and questionnaires of managers, dozens of front-line staffers, associated medical personnel, and current program clientele across the 6 top Ontario LHINs (Local Health Improvement Networks) of program concentration;
    • tasked and arranged the conduct of Gap and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analyses of status quo variants, the application of multi-goal and socioeconomic analysis to assess effectiveness, unintended effects, and equity, the application of cost-benefit analyses to review risk management options (share, avoid, reduce, accept), and presented synthesis upgrades, multiple alternative approaches, and best practices from other jurisdictions for possible Ontario or national mainstreaming;
    • authored and edited a final report including significant stakeholder and partner input on program tailoring for more efficient, effective, and sustainable service delivery. 

Of note – our 230+ page report to the steering committee representing 24+ separate stakeholder agencies and primarily received by the funding Ontario Ministry of Health and Longterm Care (MOHLTC), immediately secured more provincial funding for seniors, and in 2017 under Dr. Jane Philpott as federal health minister, an additional $4.2 billion federal dollars were allocated for home care and mental health in Ontario alone, to be expended over 10 years. 

This was thanks to our work stressing the national priority to maintain critical seniors’ services despite macro fiscal challenges, in an aging population of baby boomers and new immigrant seniors all with their own fiscal challenges, and ever more senior bankruptcies that are major mental health stressors.

Further thereto, the 2019 federal budget brought Canada’s first National Dementia Strategy, as well as further increased funding and efficiencies for the Old Age Security, Guaranteed Income Supplement/Allowance, and Canada Pension Plan programs to better ensure “a secure and dignified retirement for Canadians”.

Tell us, what are the key questions or concerns in regulatory, administrative, and international law for someone in your specific position?


Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) advising
We have solid experience in formulating corporate, regulatory, and administrative policy by developing and delivering comprehensive strategies and initiatives to help enable, promote, and monitor best practices amongst regulated entities and individuals through good governance, nimble risk management, and responsible and responsive compliance programs – including targeted and timely “entity-wide” private sector corporate, or “whole of government” regional and national, crisis response strategies; with our past work including:

  • Advising clients on diverse matters regarding their international trade in goods, trade in services, and outsourced operations;
  • Advising multiple web-based businesses regarding their ongoing compliance obligations and the attendant risks;
  • Advising an e-health services provider that was subject to several U.S. and Canadian health and privacy laws;
  • Advising a New Jersey church on refinance the mortgage on, and then letting-out a residential property, and then advising on conforming residential lease documents and tenancy matters;
  • Advising a New Jersey lessee in the re-negotiation of a distressed New York restaurant lease;
  • Working in a governance, risk, and compliance advising capacity, as In-House Counsel,  for a U.S-based telecommunications consulting entity that regularly bid on and won installation and operation contracts in education, healthcare, and national security;
  • Advising on the expansion of a franchise in compliance with the franchise agreement;
  • Advising on the formation of an innovative agro-industrial wholesale concept with implicit supply chain risks;
  • Advising a resource industry entity on initiating operations overseas in jurisdictions fraught with GRC challenges. 

With the increasingly complex, wired, and interconnected regulatory and trade environment in which we all now live, work, and play, both businesses and individuals can find themselves subject to overlapping and not always uniform, regulatory environments and a staggering array of risks to themselves, their partners, and their counterparties.  The spectrum of risks considered in all of these above engagements, has included but not been limited to:

  • Political risks (“key person” loss, legislative and regulatory changes, Referenda, sanctions);
  • Operational risks (Payment Cards Industry compliance, supply chain events, and Cybersecurity);
  • Legal and lifecycle risks (GMO disputes and food recalls);
  • Integration and interoperability risks (DDOS impacts on eCommerce, and core- and back-office functions);
  • Triangular risks (training of staff, terror events, and third-party actor events);
  • Interest rate and market risks (deficits, credit ratings, market and taste shifts);
  • Counterparty and climate risks (business continuity planning pinch points);
  • Situational risks (including advising a Chief Executive on the planning and risks of their travel with the state Governor on a 40-person delegation to Asia, that same CEO’s own spearheading of 10 business leaders traveling to pursue business opportunities in West Africa), and consideration of several other possible causes of uninsured or uninsurable loss found in other entities’ business lines and contemplated operating environments.

Acting through our management and strategic consulting and advisory subsidiary Strategic IMPRIME Consulting and Advisory, Inc. (S’imprime-ca), we  wrote a policy and strategy brief for Alberta Energy on adjusting to the global falling oil price crisis in late 2014, with a view to achieving interim operational stability and long-term profitability, and keeping systemic surge capacity pending resumption of a more favourable fiscal operating environment.

Working under a very tight deadline to address this fast-moving and multidimensional crisis, selected key recommendations, included:

(i) to enlist public and private sector stimulus spending for infrastructure;

(ii) to ensure petrochemicals can get from the prairies to tidewater;

(iii) to refine locally; and

(iv) to re-deploy skilled oil and gas workers into local infrastructure projects and further education, thereby keeping them local and spending.  

These recommendations have since been actioned by way of:

  • the Canada Infrastructure Bank;
  • the purchase by Canada’s federal government of the Trans Mountain Pipeline for $4.5 billion in order to better and more closely ensure the completion of its expansion, and operational restart; along wth Alberta’s initial plan to purchase 7,000 railcars to ship oil out, which later became a solid deal to lease 4,400 railcars for the same purpose, and at a cost of $3.7 billion over 3 years; and
  • Alberta’s push to increase local refining and upgrading to both create domestic jobs and boost export value.

Tell us, which risks do you face, how do you assess their potential severity of impact on your and partner or counterparty operations and likelihood of occurrence, how do you plan to re-align your GRC programs to navigate this, or precisely why do you see them as being just fine, for now?


Ongoing Legal Counsel, and other areas
Things come up, laws change, and the personal circumstances of business founders and their managers can also change over time; at times drastically and in unexpected ways.  Some people only start to scramble for legal Counsel and other crisis-related professionals after the crisis hits, whilst others have “Retained Counsel” in place for ongoing advice and consultation, solid business continuity and crisis communication plans in place and veteran crisis response and management professionals within easy reach.  

We have worked with and reported directly to such senior leaders in for-profit and not-for-profit entities at the C-level, as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Operations, Lead and General Counsel, Board of Directors, Executive Director, Project Steering Committee, and verbally briefed a Quorum of 60 Program Managers on the circulated written results of one of our investigations, with a lively question and answer session.  Accustomed to working with the most senior leaders, we are therefore open to discussing your unique circumstances and the several categories of risks that you might face in your line or lines of business, and working towards tailoring legal services to your needs and your budget, if Retained Counsel might be an option.  

Where we do not have the depth of staff in a specific area or do not offer services in a specific type of law, we can access our colleagues and contacts to try and get you to what you seek.  Tell us, what do you do, and how have you learned from the last crisis faced by you or a peer, and prepared for the next one?


Licenses:
Although sometimes inactive where not currently engaged on client matters, Mr. George has been licensed to the practise of law in Alberta Province, New Jersey State, New York State, Ontario Province, and the District of Columbia.