Louis N. (Buddy) Lee
Member
1601 Elm Street, Suite 4600
Dallas, Texas 75201
T: (214) 954-4135
F: (214) 953-1332
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Buddy's practice is focused in the area of commercial transactions with a special emphasis on start-ups and small to medium-sized businesses and the interests of their closely held ownership.
His practice addresses such diverse areas as tax and business planning, structuring ventures, investment funds, partnerships and business alliances, business formations, business governance issues and formalities, financing, private equity funding, private placement memorandums, employment, contracts, office and equipment leases, divestments, acquisitions, mergers, liquidations, consolidations, tax-free reorganizations, conversions, tax equity partnerships, limited liability companies and joint ventures and the demands of the owners themselves in such areas as succession planning, shareholder agreements, buy-sell agreements, deferred compensation, estate planning and asset preservation.
This diverse practice includes the acquisition, financing and sale of real estate, including Section 1031 exchanges and the use of tenancy-in-common structures, involving multi-family residences, storage facilities, shopping centers and commercial buildings.
Buddy's style of practice is based on developing a personal relationship with his clients. To be successful in achieving that relationship, the development of a bond of trust must ensue between Buddy and his clients. That trust is developed by the adherence by Buddy to the following guidelines in his relationship with his clients:
- Achievement of the client's goals
- Constant and honest communication with the client
- Not only hearing the client but listening to what is being said
- Staying on task to achieve the client's goals
- Offering counsel based on good legal and sound business judgment
- Efficiency of effort
- Adaptability to changing facts or discovery of facts
By approaching the task and the relationship with the client as a collaborative effort and recognizing both intellectually and in practice that it is the client's money that is funding the project, then both the expectations and the finances of the client should be in alignment with the reasonableness of effort and the likelihood of success.
Before joining Looper Reed & McGraw, Buddy was a founding shareholder and Managing Director of another Dallas law firm for more than ten years. That was a hands-on experience of managing and operating a small business that has given Buddy a greater appreciation for the processing of the many factors that must be considered in making the decisions that not only impact the bottom line to the business but directly affect the people who make up the business. Prior to that experience, Buddy practiced law for several years with a number of different law firms of varying sizes in Dallas, for ten years as tax counsel with a Fortune 100 international energy company and for four years with the Chief Counsel's Office to the IRS in Washington, D.C.
