Real Estate

Because leasing is a significant part of our firm's real estate practice, we understand the critical role leasing plays in commercial real estate. For the owner, strong leases with good tenants can mean the difference between success and failure. For the lessor, rental costs often are a business' largest fixed expense and the flexibility and fairness of the lease can tremendously affect not only the success of the business, but also the tenant's ability to adjust to changing market conditions.

 

Team members have experience helping clients in all aspects of structuring, negotiating, drafting and enforcing leases for all kinds of commercial real estate, including office buildings, unimproved land, shopping centers, pad sites, "big box" transactions, business parks, industrial facilities and mixed-use projects. The members of our leasing team have a collective experience that exceeds 100 years of law practice and more than 1,000 lease transactions. We realize the importance of concluding transactions quickly and take pride in our ability to facilitate deals while providing superior legal work. Turning lease drafts around promptly is one key component of this effort to provide the highest level of client service.

 

With a clientele consisting of both landlords and tenants, our leasing practice is as varied as real estate itself—including institutional asset managers, developers, lenders, law firms, colleges, hotels, restaurants, non-profit associations, as well as businesses ranging from large corporations to small retail operations. We represent the owners of numerous office buildings and retail projects on all of their leasing matters. We develop a form lease tailored each client’s specific real estate, whether it is a multi-use waterfront hotel and shopping mall, a turn-of-the century firehouse converted to an office building, a strip center, or a first class office building. To reduce transaction costs, we emphasize clarity rather than length in all our drafting. If necessary, we can assemble a team of lawyers to ensure that we can handle multiple transactions or large-scale projects promptly.

 

When representing a tenant, we pay particular attention to operating cost pass-throughs, market rent provisions, tax issues, and other matters that affect the client’s occupancy costs. We work hard to negotiate a lease that protects the client and addresses its business needs.

 

Our leasing practice is dedicated to meeting both the present and future needs of our clients. As an ongoing service, we monitor business trends, market changes, and recent legislative developments in order to anticipate tenant bankruptcies, downturns in retail business, and other relevant legal trends. Whenever necessary, we update our clients’ standard form leases to ensure that they remain state of the art in form and content. We assist in the day-to-day management of shopping centers and office buildings by reviewing and preparing brokerage and management agreements, lease buy-outs, assignments, subleases and lease amendments.

 

When conflicts arise between tenants and landlords or landlords and lenders, we negotiate resolutions, attempting wherever possible to find non-litigious solutions to business problems. We also can provide experienced litigation services to both landlords and tenants involved in lease disputes, brokerage disputes and all aspects of the landlord-tenant relationship.

 

Commercial leasing services include: