The Bear U.S. Launch Program
The Bear Firm serves as U.S. outside general counsel and market-entry counsel for international companies establishing, operating, and expanding a presence in the United States.
Opening a business in the United States involves far more than filing incorporation papers. A company entering the American market must navigate corporate formation, tax planning, banking, employment, immigration, commercial leases, licensing, regulatory compliance, contracts, intellectual property, and ongoing reporting obligations — most of them governed by different laws in every state, enforced by different agencies, on different calendars.
Handled separately, by a directory of disconnected vendors, these issues produce unnecessary expense, inconsistent advice, and avoidable risk. Handled together, they become what they should have been from the start: one legal foundation — designed once, built correctly, and maintained by counsel who knows the entire structure because counsel built it.
That is the premise of The Bear U.S. Launch Program. We do not simply form your company. We build and manage its U.S. legal infrastructure — from the first planning decision through entity formation, tax architecture, banking documentation, offices and facilities, employment and immigration, licensing, and the continuing compliance that keeps an American company in good standing. International companies do not need a collection of disconnected U.S. vendors. They need one coordinated American legal strategy.
And because The Bear Firm is, above all, a firm of trial lawyers, that infrastructure is designed by counsel who know how American disputes, investigations, and enforcement actually unfold — and who structure, draft, and advise accordingly. We don’t simply help companies enter the United States. We become their U.S. legal department.
Every sound launch is designed before the first document is filed.
The structure chosen in the first month determines the taxes, exposure, and flexibility of every year that follows.
American banks open accounts for companies whose documentation answers every question before it is asked.
From a virtual office to a turn-key warehouse or manufacturing facility — on lease terms that were not written for your benefit until your counsel rewrote them.
The rules that govern American employees surprise nearly every foreign employer. They should never surprise yours.
Before the first transaction, the licenses. Before the licenses, knowing which ones exist.
An American company is never finished being formed. It must be maintained.
The launch ends. The relationship does not.
The firm leads the legal workstreams and coordinates qualified accountants, tax professionals, immigration counsel, brokers, bankers, insurers, and other specialists where their disciplines are required; it does not itself provide brokerage, accounting, or banking services. No governmental approval, banking, financing, visa, license, or tax outcome is ever guaranteed.
Entity to tax, banking to registered agent, office to workforce, contracts to compliance — the Program was built so that every U.S. legal requirement of an international company has one home and one telephone number.
One law firm. One point of responsibility. One coordinated U.S. strategy.
International finance, the capital markets, and the address global business is expected to have. For European and international companies, American operations — and American disputes — concentrate in New York. The firm practices in New York’s state courts and in all four of its federal districts, and builds U.S. operations that can withstand both.
The New York office →
For Latin American, Central American, and Caribbean businesses, the first U.S. address is usually a Miami address. The firm’s Florida office sits in Brickell, the financial district through which the hemisphere’s commerce moves, and practices in Florida’s state courts and the Southern District of Florida.
The Miami office →Supported by the firm’s offices in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. Explore the world the firm serves →
The United States is the world’s largest market and one of its most fragmented legal environments: fifty states, thousands of taxing jurisdictions, and parallel federal, state, and local rules for nearly everything a business does. The failures below are the ones international companies most often discover too late. None of them requires bad luck. All of them are preventable.
A structure chosen in ten minutes online can tax the same dollar twice — once in the United States and again at home — or leave a foreign parent exposed to the very liabilities its subsidiary was supposed to absorb. Entity selection is a tax decision, a liability decision, and an immigration decision made in the same moment, and it is expensive to unwind.
Foreign founders are told, reflexively, to form in Delaware. But a company whose office, employees, and revenue are in New York or Florida must qualify and pay tax there anyway — so the reflex often buys a second set of filings, fees, and franchise taxes without the benefits it was meant to deliver. Where you form should follow where you will actually operate.
In much of the world there is one national sales-tax authority. In the United States there are thousands of state and local ones, and a company can owe tax in states it has never physically entered. The liability accrues quietly from the first sale and surfaces years later — with penalties and interest — in an audit or in the due diligence that was supposed to close your next round.
“At-will” does not mean what most foreign employers assume, and it never means without rules. Misclassifying employees as contractors, paying salaries that violate overtime law, importing a handbook written for another country’s workforce — each is routine, and each carries real penalties. U.S. employment compliance is federal, state, and often municipal, all at once.
The executive sent to run the new American operation may have no legal right to work in it on the visa in their passport. Immigration strategy must be designed alongside the corporate structure — certain visa categories depend on how the entity is owned and capitalized — not discovered at the airport.
U.S. banks must verify who ultimately owns and controls a company before opening an account. Foreign ownership without the right corporate records, beneficial-ownership documentation, and U.S. points of contact is how accounts stall for months — while payroll, the lease, and every vendor wait behind them.
The American corporate shield holds only if the formalities are kept: minutes, resolutions, annual filings, separate accounts, real capitalization. Companies that skip them can discover — usually in litigation, at the worst possible moment — that a court is willing to pierce the veil and reach the owners directly.
County, municipal, industry-specific: the license nobody knew was required tends to announce itself by inspector, fine, or stop-work order, after the money is already spent. In the United States, permission to operate is assembled from federal, state, and local pieces — and assembling it is the company’s job.
None of these failures begins as a legal emergency. Each begins as a question no one asked. Coordinated counsel exists to ask them.
Establishing U.S. sales, distribution, warehouse, or manufacturing operations — and needing the entity, the tax structure, the lease, the workforce, and the sales-tax registrations to arrive in the right order.
Opening a U.S. headquarters or satellite office, most often through Miami, where banking documentation and immigration questions attach to nearly every early decision — and where the firm’s Florida office was built to answer them.
Opening U.S. commercial operations: customer contracts under American law, employees across multiple states, and intellectual property that must be protected before the first deal is signed, not after.
Entering the American market for the first time, where the structure that served the family at home rarely maps neatly onto U.S. entity, tax, and control choices — and where getting it right the first time matters most.
Foreign companies acquiring or investing in an existing U.S. business — where what you are buying includes its contracts, its employees, its licenses, and its compliance history, whether you examined them or not.
Founders, chief financial officers, general managers, and general counsel abroad who need one U.S. point of legal responsibility — a firm that answers for the whole, rather than a directory of American vendors who each answer for a part.
A defined initial engagement: your objectives, the right structure, the right state, the right sequence — delivered as a coordinated plan covering entity, tax, banking, facilities, people, licensing, and timing.
The plan, executed: formation and governance, banking documentation, leases, employment and immigration coordination, contracts, and licensing — defined workstreams with clear scope, and any specialist or third-party charges disclosed transparently.
After launch, the firm remains: outside general counsel on a monthly arrangement scaled to the company’s size and needs — one relationship that grows with the American operation, and answers when something goes wrong.
We don’t simply help companies enter the United States. We become their U.S. legal department.
Tell us what you are planning — the market, the activities, the timing. The firm will run a conflicts check, and an attorney will schedule a confidential preliminary consultation to discuss how your launch would be structured and sequenced. Most engagements begin with the Launch Plan.
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