Karen V. Mills With Mills Law, LLC

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio and this is going to be a fun one today on the show we have Karen Mills with Mills Law. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Mills: [00:00:35] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] Well, I’m so excited to learn about your practice. Tell us a little bit about Mills law. How are you serving folks?

Karen Mills: [00:00:43] Ok, so. Mills Law LLC is a boutique law firm located here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we specialize in corporate transactional contracts and business law. I like to say we do everything from helping you form the entity to selling the entity and a lot in between and a lot in between the shoes, the contract review, negotiation and drafting.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] Well, what’s your backstory? Have you always been interested in law?

Karen Mills: [00:01:07] Well, you know, it’s funny. I always wanted to be an attorney. It was just a ninth grade of high school. But what happened is the summer. After my junior year of high school, I attended a program at Georgia Tech called Mike Minority. Introduction to Engineering fell in love with electrical engineering and Georgia Tech. So I have an electrical engineering degree, worked as an engineer for about four and a half years up in the North Carolina area. And then once I became a registered professional engineer, I quit and went to law school at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:39] Now, after graduating law school, did you join one of these large firms or have you always worked in boutique firms?

Karen Mills: [00:01:47] I actually did join a mid-sized firm on one of the oldest here in Atlanta, and I worked my way up from associate to partner there and then started my own firm with another attorney in 2010 and and realized, really, I laugh out loud, say how tight I am and realize I need to be by myself. So I formed Mills Law Associates at that time in January of 2011. So I have actually just a few weeks ago celebrated my 11th anniversary of my own firm. And I guess I’ve been practicing law now for a little over twenty two years.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] Well, congratulations. That’s quite an achievement.

Karen Mills: [00:02:27] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] Now what? So what attracted you to having your own firm? Like, what are the kind of the four for maybe aspiring attorneys out there? What would be some of the trade offs of having your own firm as opposed to working for, like you said, in a midsize or even with a smaller firm?

Karen Mills: [00:02:48] I laughed. I always joke that once I was left the big firm and was at just me, I said I missed the mailroom. That’s how I missed the mailroom and having the luxury of having that laugh out loud. But no, I always say to folks when talking about being on their own and entrepreneur, you know, the best part of it, it’s just you. The worst part about it is just you. I mean, my thing is if you do not kill, you don’t eat. So a lot of times is that, you know, when you have clients, you’re looking for clients, when you don’t have clients, you’re looking for clients. So you’re always looking for clients, right? But you know, I guess with the big firm, of course, you have a lot more departments there and a lot more collaborative collaboration between the various departments. Now I do have collaboration now as a solo practitioner, but I team up with other solo and small firm as needed because it’s quite a few of us who have been partners at mid to large sized firms and now we have our own practice or a small practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:56] Now is there any advice you can share for entrepreneurs or maybe solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, small business owners when it comes to kind of legal issues that maybe they’re not paying as much attention to as they should?

Karen Mills: [00:04:13] Yeah, a few things, there’s some of these little pitfalls that I constantly see out here, one of the things that I often see and even when I’m doing my presentations, is incomplete corporate records and a lot of times one of the things I ask is what is a corporate board? And I added that to a lot of my presentations because there was someone that I knew well who worked in supplier development at a Fortune 500 company. And of course, you know, being a Fortune 500 company, people of course, want to do business with them. And they stated that when they were sitting across the table from various individuals and they would say a term like corporate. And those individuals looked like a deer in headlights. They were like, OK and what she stated she wanted to say. But what she didn’t know was that if you don’t understand the term like corporate minute book is not likely, you would get a contract at that kind of company, a Fortune 500 company. So when she told me that this was years ago, I try to make it an effort to when I’m doing presentations to ask whether people actually have a corporate minute book. And, you know, it’s just basically the official written record. You know that it’s going to contain all of the governing documentation, as well as the documented approval of various transactions of the owners and offices of the entity.

Karen Mills: [00:05:30] And a lot of times, people, you know, because we’re good at forming a lot of our entities online ourselves. So we’re, you know, we’ll do the name reservation with the secretary of State. We’ll file the articles of organization. If we’re limited liability company, we’ll file the articles of incorporation if we’re a corporation and typically that may be where we stop. Well, we also need if we’re a limited liability company, let’s make sure we have an operating agreement. We also want to make sure that we have, if you often ask prove to me, you’re the owner of the company when I’m presentations and people pull out business cards and I’m like, Look, I can go to say, get a business card that says, no, nothing like that doesn’t prove it. Show me the ownership at your equity ownership certificate. Whether it’s a limited liability company, you have your unit certificate or your member certificate. If you are a corporation, you’re going to have a share certificate or a stock certificate. And those are the kinds of things, of course, that you’ll find in the corporate minute book. You’ll find the consents where you are approving, authorizing even from the formation of the entity or various purchases, especially significant purchases that may be there. And you also have the corporate seal. You know, oftentimes if we are executing real estate related documents or maybe some bank financing documents and on that signature block there, in addition to the, you know, name printed by all of that information, they may have S.E.A.L.

Karen Mills: [00:06:50] Which of course, they want you to embossed the corporate seal. So that also comes in the corporate minute book. And so, you know, and you can google it and see know. But I want to make sure when I tell people that they can Google and find corporate minute book, make sure that you know what you’re doing to be able to prepare the documentation properly because things have to make sure they are in alignment so that when you have your corporate minute book and often the information that’s in it, you may need it for certification. You may be applying for certification as a minority owned business, a woman owned business or a disadvantaged business enterprise. You might even somebody may want to invest in your company, and they may be asking for that documentation. And what you don’t want to happen is when they request the contents of it, you’re telling them, hold on, you know, give me about a month and I can get that to you because that wouldn’t look well ahead for at all. So you want to make sure that you’re keeping up with that kind of information initially so that you don’t have to try to recreate the wheel when you have those investors or someone may want to purchase your company or you’re trying to apply for various certifications.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:01] Now, do you find that most small, even mid-sized companies, they don’t. They’re kind of underrepresented that they’re not leaning on the advice of attorneys enough, especially, you know, you want to get some of these your ducks in a row right from the beginning, so you don’t have any surprises later on because at some point most people want to sell their business. They want to, you know, get partners, get loans, get money, get certified for a variety of different things. And if you don’t do some of this foundational stuff right at the beginning, it can really hurt you later on.

Karen Mills: [00:08:36] That’s exactly right, we see it often. You know, and I like I explained early, I do corporate transactional contracts and business also strictly transactional work. I hate to see it when I have potential clients come to me who’ve already entered into a contract, and either they’re not getting paid or something else is wrong. And at that point, all I can do is refer them to a litigator. And I mean, they’re the ones that are going into court. They’re doing all this and it’s like, you know, it’s costly and you just want to tell them, you know, Oh, if you only come to me on the front end, maybe once I reviewed that contract, I could have told you that it was one where you don’t get paid unless maybe the prime contractor gets paid. And so, you know, you signed off on that. I’m like, Did you pay attention to that when you initially reviewed the contract? And a lot of times it’s like, Well, you know, I looked for the payment provision and sold it, and they told me it was going to be a two year contract. So I look for the term and it’s like, you can’t just look at those things while they are key provisions are very important. Every single word in a contract count. So you have to take time to review it or you have somebody to review it. And oftentimes what I’m finding is that people are often intimidated by attorneys. They, of course, sometimes it may be cost prohibitive as they think, because of course, sometimes they don’t see the value in our services, sometimes until after the fact. And you know, sometimes you know, like, I was selling a couple of potential clients yesterday, you know, a lot of us who are small and solo practitioners, we’re small businesses too. So we understand about small business ownership and entrepreneurship. So we are sensitive to that. And then often when we see people who are trying to do things the right way, sometimes you’d be amazed at how people will work with you regarding certain things.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:31] Now, in addition to being an attorney, you’re also an entrepreneur. Can you talk a little bit about your food products adventure?

Karen Mills: [00:10:40] Yeah, so I laughed. It’s CVM Enterprises LLC doing business as Miss Treats as a play off of my late mother’s name. Her name was Jeanette and it’s Miss Janice treats. And so when I was an associate at the firm years ago at holiday season, my sister had given me a recipe for spicy scones. I made those and bored people went crazy over them and they were like, Oh, you need to make these all the time. I was like, Are you kidding me? I’m like, I am barely able to keep up with my legal hours. You think I want to do this on a regular? We’ll fast forward 15 years later, I said, You know what? Let me try and see if anybody would really want to buy these things. So I’m originally born and raised in Macon, Georgia, so I went to a flea market down there. This was in December of twenty fifteen, and I said, You know what? Let me see if anybody would want to buy these. So I ended up engaging a graphic designer to make a pecan with eyelashes and boots. That was hilarious, and that was a get a little, got some mason jars and, you know, Miss Jenny Spice becomes and I learned a couple of things. One. It’s funny because when I was trying to give them to people to taste this, they were like, Are they hot? I’m like, Hot. No, they sugar cinnamon mix. But I was like, OK, the name spice becomes OK, so I said, I’m going to have to change the name. And then I realized that people did want to purchase them. So I said, for twenty sixteen, I’m going to launch a website and I’m going to change the name. So now they’re mischin these treats simply divine pecans.

Karen Mills: [00:12:03] I have a website and we actually celebrated the fifth year anniversary last year, so we’re getting ready to approach the sixth anniversary soon. And I say, look, they came about because I was making them for gifts for colleagues and clients. So I make them, you know, I make them now, of course, commercial kitchen doing all of that. But I said they make great gifts because that’s what they were intended for initially. So I get, you know, holiday season is extremely busy with making those gifts. And I I love it. I get so many stories about when they are received as gifts. I remember one consultant. He had sent quite a few out to various clients, and he said one client called him about two or three times afterwards. And then he called me. He was like, What did you put in there? Did you put something in addition to that one? 10? I was like, No. He said, this lady has called me three times about Typekit. I said, Well, what? You have to look at it that with that being is you just got three touch points that you could talk to their client about something. So I was like, So I love it. The stories that I get every single year about people loving the taste of them and they just, you know, laugh out loud if they have some folks who like, you know, you’re going to cause us to get divorced because I got home one day and there were no pecans left and I’m considering it, I think I might need to divorce him for trying to leave me without any pecan. So it’s just so many stories around here. But like I say, they make great gifts for others or good treat for yourself.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:34] So any advice for that as. Hiring a person who has maybe a family recipe that in the back of their head, they said, You know what, maybe I could make a go of this. What would be some, some things they can do to take action to see if it’s viable or not? Because, you know, some of these things, you know, might taste good to your family, but to the public, it may not be as wonderful.

Karen Mills: [00:13:56] Exactly, and I would suggest doing something like I did where you’re like, you know what? You can go down to a flea market where you just pay a booth rent and see whether people are receptive to them. And once I realize that others were receptive, I was like, You know what? This seems like it may be a good idea commercially. So, you know, do that taste testing and see if somebody wants to want your product and then, you know, go full speed ahead as far as making sure you know you’re going to have a website. You know, engage somebody or get some ideas regarding marketing and then don’t let anybody. I laugh because, you know, I say it’s not rocket science. The recipe, right? And I’m like, but a lot of times people are paying for the convenience. I’ll get people to say, Oh, I make these becomes. But you know what? I love it because you’re making them. You know, that means I don’t have the headache of it. So you know, you have to realize one thing I’ve learned over the years, they said people pay for answers, they don’t pay for problems. So if you can be an answer to someone, go full speed ahead. And my attitude is I want to die empty. So any gift and talent that I have, I’m going to use it. So when folks see me selling the pecans and I’m practicing law and I was, you know, an engineer and then an educator because I’ve also been an adjunct professor at Emory Law School teaching contract drafting. I’m like, Look, any gift and talent I have, I’m going to use it. Don’t feel like that. You have to stay in one particular position or a silo. Use them all, use your gifts and talents.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] Now, now getting back to your law firm is the do you have an ideal kind of profile of a client or do you do you do you work with certain types of entities?

Karen Mills: [00:15:39] No, you know, I have a wide variety, I have Fortune 500 companies where I assist their in-house, they have huge in-house legal departments. I do that and then I also assist the individual, the ones who are just starting out, who has no idea about starting a business so that sometimes they’re just relying on me regarding, you know, like what should I do now? So it’s a variety. And you know, of course, I only have so much time to be able to serve everyone. But, you know, I always laugh, I joke. Sometimes I’m like folks who need legal services and can pay for them, not in order, but an inch. But, but I have a wide variety, and I think what happens a lot of times is people sometimes don’t understand the the different practice areas that can actually impact their business. I’ll get someone to say, Karen, I’m about to buy a building or purchase some land. I was like, OK, I need to get you to commercial real estate attorney or I have some some issues related to copyright trademark need to get you to an intellectual property attorney. You tell me, OK, Karen, I think I might have some. Some folks that are in this are interested in investing in my business. Well, I want to make sure to get you to a securities attorney. So there are so many different kinds of practice areas that can impact the business. And what you want to do is get someone to me that’s practicing in that particular area day in, day out because to me, they’re going to be cost effective and then they definitely know what they’re talking about.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:09] So now on your website, do you have resources for folks that maybe they’re not ready or maybe they can’t afford to hire you today? But are there resources there for them to maybe just learn a little bit so they can at least get some baby steps or foundational information so they’re off in the right direction on the right foot?

Karen Mills: [00:17:32] I do. If you go to my website is Mills Law LLC. That’s Emil’s L.A. LLC. You go to the legal learning page and you’ll see I have some free webinars there that talks about pitfalls. I have some paid webinars, and I even just coauthored a legal resource guide workbook with Antoinette Ball from the organization Women’s Entrepreneurial Opportunity Project. And it is entitled Avoiding Business Conflicts. Avoiding Business Conflicts is five important contracts and legal documents for entrepreneurs and business owners. And how it came about is because, you know, they their organization is a nonprofit organization we offer and they help female business owners. But we also they also have male members as well. And and then for me and my practice area of just seeing day in, day out some of these pitfalls, what we were trying to do is create a resource because like when I do those presentations, you know, people aren’t going to what they don’t know in front of people. So it’s like, you know what? And they know they don’t know what. They’re afraid to ask questions. So if this kind of workbook can be used in the comfort of their home or the comfort of their office, where they are getting samples of certain documents, and so what happens is it’s kind of takes you on a journey. It’s a small business owner of a tech company who meets somebody at a chamber and realizes that they I think they may be an angel investor and they want to share some information with them.

Karen Mills: [00:19:04] They realize, say, I need a non-disclosure confidentiality agreement, so that’s the first agreement in there. Then they realize that you have someone that needs to come in to service their computers, but they don’t have a services agreement. So the next agreement is a services agreement. Then they realize, you know what? I have too much work for me to handle, but I and I can’t afford an employee, but maybe I can engage an independent contractor. So we have an independent contract agreement in there. Then they’re at the point when they’re ready and able to hire an employee and sustain an employee. So we have an employment offer letter. And then the final. The fifth agreement that we have a sample of in there is that they are ready to team with others as individuals or as an entity to respond to a request for proposal. So we have a teaming agreement to respond to request for proposal. So those are the five documents that we have in there. We have samples of them in there. We actually have information that describes key provisions in there. We have work sheets in there that will help you determine whether that particular agreement is appropriate for you at this time.

Karen Mills: [00:20:12] And then we also have some legal ease and then where we make it to where it can be, where a layperson can understand some of these legal terms. And and the goal was to be able to create affordable, quality resources because you could pull every form that I mentioned. You could pull it online somewhere. But the key is, are you going to understand those key provisions? And so what I also have done on that website as well on my website, you will see that I have and they’ll be starting next month. We’re going to be doing webinars that will go over a couple of those chapters. So it’s going to be three webinars, one during the intro in the first chapter. Second webinar is the third and fourth chapter in there as well. And then the last one we’ll have that will go over that final chapters as well. So, you know, we’re just trying to making those going to be probably about 30 minute webinars, but just trying to give you some overall general information because what we’re trying to do is empower you, equip you OK, as well as educate you. And that’s what we’re trying to do for the entrepreneurs and business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:24] Well, congratulations on all the success. You’re just doing so much good work and so many areas. It just must be so rewarding for you to attack each day.

Karen Mills: [00:21:38] Thank you, thank you so much, and I greatly appreciate this opportunity because just trying to make sure that people are aware of this information. I think that makes all the world of difference because sometimes you know, we perish because of the lack of knowledge. And if we can just educate some of these entrepreneurs and business owners, I think it will help build them, build their legal foundation and then help them in being sustainable and help them with their growth as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:06] And then can you share the websites one more time, the law firm and and the pecan treats as well?

Karen Mills: [00:22:14] Ok, thank you. Ok, so the law firm website is Mills Law LLC. So am I. Ls La LLC. And then for the Food Products Company, which is CBRM Enterprises LLC doing business as misogynist treats, it’s Miss Jenny’s treats dot com. That’s M ISG and NYS TR S.A.T.s dot com. So it’s Miss Jenny’s treats dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:44] Well, Karen, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Karen Mills: [00:22:49] Thank you so much for having me and just let me know if I can provide any additional information.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:55] You got it. All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll sell next time on Atlanta Business Radio.