Holland & Hart serves international clients and domestic clients with international interests across multiple legal disciplines. Our attorneys regularly provide critical services for international commerce:
- Business and financial transactions
- Technology transfer, licensing, and intellectual property protection
- Export controls, trade sanctions, imports, and customs
- International taxation
- Cross-border employment
- Immigration and naturalization
- International real estate
- Energy, natural resources, and environmental matters
- Climate change
- Project finance and infrastructure development
- Dispute resolution
In support of our counsel to clients with international matters, we have close working relationships with leading law firms throughout the world, ensuring prompt and efficient service in virtually any country.
Holland & Hart is a member of TerraLex, one of the largest international networks of independent law firms. The TerraLex network includes more than 15,000 attorneys in nearly 100 countries, providing Holland & Hart with global access and local experience. For more information about TerraLex, please visit www.terralex.org.
We Speak Your Language
Many Holland & Hart lawyers are fluent in more than one language. Our attorneys have resided or practiced law abroad and are familiar not only with foreign commercial and tax laws, but also with overseas cultural climates and business practices. As a result, we provide clients with the same sophisticated transactional experience they expect from other national firms, with no need to step outside the Holland & Hart umbrella.
Business and Financial Transactions
Our attorneys have experience representing Fortune 100 companies and large multinationals, as well as small and large publicly and privately held businesses of the Mountain West.
- Joint ventures
- Outsourcing/offshoring
- International debt and equity financing transactions
- Cross-border mergers and acquisitions
- Foreign antitrust compliance
- Transactions and reorganizations involving foreign business entities
- Distribution, procurement, agency and other commercial agreements
- Inbound investments by clients in other countries
We regularly advise our clients in connection with foreign and international commercial laws affecting the cross-border movement of goods and services. Our work includes the establishment of foreign operations and subsidiaries, distribution relationships, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing/offshoring, technology transfers and licensing, cross-border sales of goods, foreign antitrust compliance, and advice on raising capital through U.S. and foreign commercial lenders, multilateral organizations, export credit agencies, and public and private debt and equity markets.
Technology Transfer, Licensing & Intellectual Property Protection
With one of the most sophisticated practices in the U.S., our attorneys help protect intellectual property rights in jurisdictions around the world. We are familiar with foreign patent, trademark, and copyright practices and have established relationships with associate firms in a large number of countries through which we file applications.
Our lawyers help with a range of IP matters that reach across borders:
- Intellectual property licensing, including reseller and alliance agreements
- Copyrights
- Patents
- Trademarks and tradenames
- Event sponsorships and multimedia rights
- Enforcement and protection of intellectual property
We work directly with lawyers around the world to provide timely and cost-effective prosecution, search, clearance, and registration services. Once protection is obtained, our lawyers monitor new applications filed by third parties throughout the world in order to facilitate the timely opposition of potentially conflicting marks or rights. We also have extensive experience litigating and counseling our clients on infringing products, gray market importation, and counterfeit goods.
Data Privacy and Information Security As digital technologies evolve, so do the opportunities and risks businesses face. Holland & Hart attorneys help clients navigate the complex matters of online business, social media, and cybersecurity, always with an eye on your ultimate business goals.
Whether clients seek to capitalize on emerging trends or to manage the accompanying risks, we provide practical legal advice relating to the challenges of using established and emerging technologies. We strive to provide a legal framework that supports clients in meeting their strategic, business, and technology objectives.
- Online privacy issues, including COPPA, CAN-SPAM, PCI DSS, PA-DSS and state privacy and encryption law compliance
- Network security
- Anti-cybersquatting
- Scam prevention, mitigation, and remediation
- Design of data and records management and storage policies
- Document retention requirements, information sharing, and information disclosure
- Vendor and supplier contracts that mitigate or transfer risk
- Security and privacy audits and assessments
Export Controls, Trade Sanctions, Imports, and Customs
Holland & Hart regularly assists clients with international regulatory challenges. We represent prominent multinational companies and some of the nation's premier corporations that face compliance challenges under the complex regime of U.S. federal law affecting international commerce.
- U.S. regulations related to exports, imports, data flow and data protection, and cross-border technology transfers
- Compliance with anti-corruption laws, embargoes, prohibitions on money-laundering, and other trade sanctions
- Representation in administrative, civil, and criminal proceedings
- Counseling on foreign barriers to entry
Our experience covers restrictions on imports, exports, and foreign investments in the United States, trade sanctions, the USA PATRIOT Act, and prohibitions on foreign corrupt practices. We provide regulatory compliance counseling and training of our clients' personnel, as well as administrative, civil, and white collar criminal defense related to violations of these restrictions.
Leveraging the extensive criminal, civil, and regulatory defense experience of the Holland & Hart legal team, we have developed a sophisticated export compliance curriculum to assist companies in preventing violations of U.S. export control laws. HHCMS is an innovative internet-based compliance management system that helps companies minimize risk and maximize training value. Customized and continually updated, HHCMS greatly increases employees' understanding of policies and regulations specific to their business. For more information, visit www.hhcompliance.com.
International Taxation
Holland & Hart's international tax attorneys routinely advise clients on the most tax-efficient means of structuring international investments, both inbound and outbound, for businesses and individuals. We also handle U.S. tax controversies relating to international matters.
- Sophisticated cross-border transaction structuring
- Resolution of tax controversies
Cross-Border Employment
We advise businesses on a variety of international employment issues, including the application of U.S. laws to workers outside of the U.S., secondment arrangements and employment agreements for employees working abroad, and discipline and termination issues for foreign employees. We also represent employers in civil court cases and arbitrations relating to employment relationships overseas. Our attorneys work closely with local counsel in numerous countries, including those belonging to the international Employment Law Alliance (www.employmentlawalliance.com), to gain high quality, efficient legal advice on the employment laws of other countries.
Immigration and Naturalization
Our immigration lawyers are committed to working with employers to ensure that they are able to transfer, hire, and retain foreign workers. We have extensive experience in employment-based immigration law, including nonimmigrant and immigrant petitions, alien labor certification applications, consular processing and adjustment of status applications, and naturalization applications. We also advise employers with respect to their employment eligibility verification obligations under federal law (the I-9 process), and we help employers implement internal procedures to verify the employment eligibility of employees and retain specific records to avoid Department of Homeland Security audits or raids.
International Real Estate
We regularly represent foreign clients in U.S. real property transactions, including those involving ranches, resort properties, and investment real estate. We advise those clients as to the special regulatory requirements for foreign investment in U.S. real estate and structure the investments to gain the maximum benefits under applicable tax treaties. In conjunction with our network of foreign law firms, we regularly assist U.S. clients with their investments in real property abroad.
Energy, Natural Resources, and Environmental Matters
We assist clients in negotiating, structuring and documenting a wide array of natural resources transactions, including joint ventures, leases, royalty agreements, purchase and sale agreements for mineral properties and water rights, and corporate mergers and acquisitions.
- Acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and financings related to mining interests and water rights
- Energy and mining exploration agreements
- Environmental compliance
- Resource privatization and financing projects
Our attorneys assist in due diligence investigations, examining title to mining claims, mineral properties, and water rights, and acquiring and transferring concessions and permits. We have significant experience in international resources transactions and are able to deal efficiently with transactional and foreign regulatory issues specific to natural resources.
Climate Change
We counsel clients engaged in energy production, transportation and use on climate change issues internationally, including assisting with clients' participation in the global carbon credits market, energy project financing, structuring energy projects throughout the world, assessment of litigation claims relating to climate change, and government relations at the national and local levels.
Project Finance and Infrastructure Development
Holland & Hart attorneys advise developers, investors, lenders, underwriters, engineering and construction firms, offtakers, state governments, quasi-governmental entities and other project participants in all aspects of global infrastructure development and financing for projects across the electric power, water, wastewater, mining, oil, gas, ethanol, biodiesel and telecommunications industries, including projects in Latin America, Europe, Russia and the CIS, China, the Pacific Rim, Africa and the Middle East.
- Energy generation plant construction and finance
- Infrastructure development
- Telecommunications and manufacturing
We have broad experience in all aspects of the project life-cycle, including RFP preparation and response, siting, permitting, engineering, procurement, project construction and operation, contracts for key feedstocks and for product sale and marketing, expansion and retrofitting of existing facilities and systems, privatization of state-owned assets, equity placements and acquisitions and divestitures of project interests, and financings through multilateral and export credit agencies, commercial banks and capital market sources.
Dispute Resolution
Our attorneys are well-versed in the many treaties and rules affecting international litigation and arbitration. Holland & Hart represents clients in controversies involving the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) arbitration rules, the 1958 U.N. Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, UNCITRAL, the AAA Special International Arbitration Rules, and ad hoc arbitrations and mediations in a number of jurisdictions.
Holland & Hart provides a dispute resolution consulting service, Persuasion Strategies, which assists clients in the assessment and preparation of cases by conducting and analyzing mock trials, mock hearings, and mock arbitrations in the U.S. and abroad.
