Business, Contracts, & Finance

We provide comprehensive legal services to businesses at every stage of their lifecycle, from initial formation to winding down or transitioning ownership. Our attorneys assist clients in selecting and structuring the appropriate legal entity — whether a corporation, partnership, or limited liability company — to best align with operational goals, tax considerations, and liability protection.

Once established, we help clients navigate the full range of legal issues that arise in operating a business. This includes drafting, reviewing, and negotiating contracts and commercial agreements, advising on regulatory compliance, and resolving disputes when they occur. We also assist clients in matters involving financing and banking, including loan documentation, credit agreements, and relationships with financial institutions.

For businesses undergoing change, we provide counsel on mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and dissolutions, ensuring that transitions are managed efficiently and in compliance with applicable laws. We also assist in succession planning and exit strategies, guiding business owners through the legal, financial, and governance issues that accompany major decisions.

Our goal is to deliver practical legal solutions that allow business owners, entrepreneurs, and organizations to focus on what they do best — running and growing their enterprises — while knowing their legal matters are in capable hands.

Banking and Finance Law

Cuddy McCarthy’s attorneys have significant experience in different types of loans, credit facility and simple loan document drafting,  and workouts.  We provide clear, strategic legal guidance in banking and finance, helping businesses, lenders, and investors close deals, manage risk, and stay compliant in a fast-changing financial landscape. From securing funding, structuring loans and credit facilities to navigating complex regulations and resolving disputes, we deliver practical, business-focused solutions that protect your interests and support your growth. While we work to prevent disputes through clear drafting, when disputes arise we assist our clients in resolving the dispute and enforcing financial agreements. Our experienced attorneys have also been engaged as local counsel to national and international lenders on projects based in New Mexico.

Whether you’re closing a major transaction, restructuring debt, or ensuring compliance, we combine deep legal expertise with a clear understanding of your commercial goals — so you can move forward with certainty.

Business Corporate/Partnership Law

Cuddy McCarthy has experienced professionals who counsel corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, non-profit corporations, boards of directors and independent business owners on issues ranging from start-up to exit strategies.  We strive to understand a client’s objectives and goals as well as business in order to be part of the best team for the success of the business.

We assist our clients with:

• Choice of entity
• Small and large businesses
• Formation of corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies
• Tax planning
• S Corporation elections
• Employment agreements
• Consulting agreements
• Purchases and sales of businesses
• Shareholder agreements
• Voting agreements
• Stock option plans
• Shareholder/member loans
• Leasing and real estate issues
• Independent contractor agreements
• Confidentiality agreements
• Non-compete agreements
• Financing arrangements and documentation
• Sales agent / representative agreements
• Distribution agreements
• Consignment agreements
• License and technology agreements
• Stock purchase agreements
• Stock redemption agreements

Our employment practices attorneys can effectively counsel employers on a wide range of topics from drafting employment manuals to avoiding harassment and other employee disputes.  We also practice in the areas of family and privately held , family law, wealth preservation, and business litigation.

Cuddy McCarthy can help develop innovative, efficient and economical solutions for the business client.

The firm also has extensive experience in organizing and creating non-profit corporations and foundations and seeking nontaxable status for those entities.

Contracts

Through our contract law practice, Cuddy McCarthy provides individuals, businesses, and other organizations with a full range of legal services in corporate and transactional matters. We assist our clients with identifying the legal issues surrounding their business goals and commercial relationships. Our attorneys have extensive experience drafting and negotiating agreements, evaluating our clients’ contractual rights and obligations, interpreting transactional documents, and enforcing contracts. Cuddy McCarthy strives to protect our clients’ interests by helping them take steps to avoid disputes in the first place. But when commercial disputes develop, our firm guides clients on favorable paths toward resolution. Cuddy McCarthy has business clients in industries including construction, retail sales, manufacturing, health care, and food service.

Tax-Exempt and Nonprofit Entities

The attorneys at Cuddy McCarthy have extensive experience in organizing and creating non-profit corporations and foundations and seeking nontaxable status for charitable, educational and scientific entities.  The first step is determining whether a client’s proposed activities will qualify for tax-exempt status.  Second, we seek input from the client about whether the entity be a “public charity”, “private foundation” or “supporting organization” and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.  Next, we assist the client in choosing and creating the type of entity such as a nonprofit corporation, charitable trust, foundation or other entity that will work best.  We then work closely with our client to complete the application to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status.

Not all nonprofit corporations qualify for tax-exempt status or are organized for that purpose.  For example, homeowners’ or condominium owners’ associations are formed as nonprofits, but their activities are not tax-exempt.  Our attorneys have substantial experience in working with these types of nonprofits.

Educational and Municipal Bond Financing

Recognized statewide as independent bond counsel and listed in The Bond Buyer’s Municipal Marketplace, Cuddy McCarthy has decades of experience guiding public entities through complex municipal financings. We’ve partnered with financial advisors, tax and bond counsel and clients to form a team that ensure transactions meet all requirements and help clients achieve the strongest possible credit ratings. We have delivered more than 250 successful public financings including general obligation bonds, refundings and other public security issues. Our practical, results-driven approach — from structuring and documentation to compliance with constitutional, statutory, and regulatory provisions — safeguards the validity of each bond issue. With deep knowledge of municipal finance, public sector law, and regulatory compliance, we deliver practical, results-focused legal solutions that empower communities to fund essential projects with confidence

Cuddy McCarthy is listed in The Bond Buyer’s Municipal Marketplace, and is recognized statewide as independent bond counsel.   The Firm has worked closely with the major national rating agencies and municipal bond insurers for many years and we are thoroughly familiar with the requirements imposed by the rating agencies and bond insurers on various types of municipal financing. We typically are involved in the rating process by providing the rating agencies with drafts and executed copies of primary financing documents to be used in a particular transaction along with a draft of the firm’s proposed bond opinion. Although the usual rating agency “package” (including, particularly, financial information relating to the client and the proposed transaction) typically is prepared by the financial advisor, we are prepared to provide whatever assistance is deemed necessary in presenting information and documentation to the rating agencies and bond insurers, in answering questions posed by such entities.

As Bond Counsel, we recognize the importance of responding promptly to requests and inquires made by the rating agencies and bond insurers. Our objective is to assist the client to achieve the highest possible rating within the financing structure which, in the opinion of the client and its professional consultants, is most beneficial to the client.  We also believe that the function of Bond Counsel includes the responsibility to assist clients in following all constitutional, statutory and regulatory provisions governing the issuance of bonds in order to avoid election contests or challenges to the validity of the bonds in subsequent proceedings.

Cuddy McCarthy represents more than three-quarters of New Mexico’s public school districts, and has served as Bond Counsel or Co-Bond Counsel in over two hundred fifty general obligation bond, refunding and other public security issues.  We have served as co-counsel on bond issues in several school districts in New Mexico, including Chama Valley, Cloudcroft, Cuba, Dexter, Dora, Dulce, Estancia, Gadsden, UNM Gallup Branch, Grants, Hondo Valley, Lake Arthur, Las Cruces, Las Vegas, Lordsburg, Mora, Pecos, Roy, Silver City, Socorro, Truth or Consequences and Vaughn.  Our practice includes advising and representing state and local public bodies in all state and federal courts, and in administrative proceedings and we have served as counsel to the Institute of American Indian Arts, a federal corporation, and post-secondary institution, for more than 15 years.

We also provide counsel and opinion letters to both public and private national communications clients on a wide range of legal matters and transactions affected by state and federal law.