Davis Business Law

Focus and practice areas

The firm works with businesses and the people who run them. Its practice sits in business law, and the site lists a clear set of services within that field. These include contracts and agreements, business formation, buying or selling a business, corporate governance, and general counsel support.

The list runs further into the day to day of running a company. The firm handles human resources questions, property matters, and litigation. It also names marijuana law as a distinct area, a field shaped closely by state regulation. That range covers early filings as well as the disputes a company may later face.

Deals, formation, and governance

Two of the firm's named services sit at the start and later life of a company: business formation and buying or selling a business. Formation work covers the choice of entity, the paperwork to register it, and the agreements among owners. The decisions made here shape how a company is taxed and who holds control.

A sale or purchase runs through its own stages. There is due diligence, where the buyer inspects the books and the contracts. There is the purchase agreement, which sets the price and the terms. Corporate governance, another area the firm names, keeps the records and decisions of a company in order once it is running. Davis Business Law lists all of these among its services.

When a matter reaches litigation

Some business problems end up in court, and the firm lists litigation among its services. Its combative and disputed categories describe matters that have moved past advice into a contest. Dixie A. Watkins, one of the partners, is admitted before three federal district courts in Oklahoma and handles business litigation.

Business litigation tends to move in steps. There are the pleadings that open a case, the discovery where each side trades documents, and the motions that narrow what a judge will hear. Many matters settle before trial once the facts are on the table. A firm that also does preventative work can weigh a lawsuit against the cost of avoiding one.

How support and cost are structured

One feature the firm puts forward is the Strong Protected Business Program. Under it, the firm gives ongoing legal support on a fixed budget and sends regular reports to the businesses it works with. In my opinion, that setup suits owners who want legal spending they can plan around.

Part of that support comes through outside general counsel, a way for a company to get ongoing legal help while keeping its own legal team small. The firm answers routine questions as they arise, such as a contract review or an employment issue, and Matthew Davis runs the program.A contract gets a second read before anyone signs it, and the firm can catch a dispute early while it is still less costly to settle.

The firm also sorts business matters into three groups: preventative, disputed, and combative. It pairs those groups with budgets, case cost estimates, and regular client updates to keep legal costs in check. A business owner gets a sense of what a matter may cost before the work starts.

How the team is built

The partners

Matthew Davis leads the firm as CEO and partner. He earned a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1993 and a master's in public administration from Cornell University in 2001. He worked for the United States Department of Energy before he entered private practice in 1995, and he joined the Oklahoma bar that same year.

Davis runs the firm's outside general counsel program, and he has served as general counsel for Groendyke Transport, Inc. That pairing of an in-house role with a public administration background gives him a close view of how legal work fits inside a working company.

Dixie A. Watkins is a partner at the firm. She holds a bachelor's degree from Oklahoma State University and a juris doctor from the University of Oklahoma. She is admitted to practice in Oklahoma and before the United States District Courts for the Western, Eastern, and Northern Districts of Oklahoma. Her work covers business litigation, outside general counsel, and administrative law.

A wider roster

The site names a further group of attorneys beyond the two partners. William Neubauer, Vivian Wang-Chan, Kimberly Atwell, Jonathan Ashton, Cara Filippelli, Cassandra Pillonel, Bianca Zuniga-Goldwater, Reese Larmer, Patrick Alvarez, and Justin Williams all appear on the firm's pages. As a reviewer, I read a roster of this size as a sign the firm has enough people to cover both advisory work and litigation.

Where the firm works

Davis Business Law lists offices in several states. In Texas, it names Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston. In Oklahoma, it lists Enid, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Yukon. The site also points to a Facebook page in its footer.

The map reaches past Texas and Oklahoma. A company with locations in more than one of these states can keep one firm throughout. The firm lists Wichita and Overland Park in Kansas, and it lists Denver in Colorado.