June Whitcomb
Founding partner
Forms companies and serves as outside general counsel to owner-run businesses.
Business law in Kansas City
Start it, sign it, sell it, settle it.
Whitcomb Ferris is three business lawyers on Main Street. We work for companies still run by the people who started them, from the first filing to the day the owner hands over the keys.
The firm
Most of our clients have between two and two hundred people on the payroll, and an owner who still signs the checks. They don't need a department of lawyers. They need one who knows the company, answers the phone and says plainly what a document will do.
So we keep the firm small and the work in four verbs. A partner takes every matter from the first call, and for the companies that want it, one of us serves as outside general counsel: a lawyer on call, for a monthly fee agreed in writing.
Practice
Four things a company does with a lawyer
- Formation
Start
Forming the company, and the agreement between its owners: who owns what, who decides, and what happens when someone leaves.
Starting a company - Contracts
Sign
Customer, supplier, lease and services contracts, written for you or read before you sign someone else's.
Contracts - Mergers and acquisitions
Sell
Selling the company, buying another, or passing it to the people who run it, from the letter of intent to the escrow release.
Buying and selling - Disputes
Settle
Unpaid invoices, broken contracts and owners who no longer agree, settled by letter where we can and in court where we must.
Business disputes
In practice
Short claims, each with the matter behind it
Split the company before you split the work.
Start: three founders of a Crossroads design studio
An operating agreement with vesting and a buyout formula, signed before their first client paid.
Read the page nobody reads.
Sign: a family bakery's first grocery-chain contract
Signed without the unlimited indemnity, and with 45-day payment terms instead of 120.
A sale is a calendar.
Sell: a 30-person HVAC company, sold to a regional buyer
Closed on the date in the letter of intent. The $180,000 escrow was released in full at twelve months.
Most disputes end in a letter.
Settle: a landscaping company owed $46,000 by a general contractor
Paid in full after one demand letter and one meeting, without a lawsuit.
Sample matters, written as illustrations for this template. Every matter is different, and past results don't guarantee a similar outcome.
The lawyers
Three partners. Read each one before you call.
Each bio says what the lawyer does, where they're admitted and how they like to work.
Graham Ferris
Partner
Represents owners buying and selling companies, from the letter of intent to the escrow release.
Paloma Ibarra
Partner
Writes and negotiates commercial contracts, and settles the disputes that come out of them.