Attorney leaves his mark

A revised law regarding how limited liability companies can operate in Florida, designed to give entrepreneurs more flexibility, goes into effect Jan. 1.

And a key contributor to the changes is Sarasota attorney Greg Marks. A partner with Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Marks was on the Florida Bar Drafting Committee, which was tasked with improving and updating LLC guidelines. The new law, the LLC Act, was passed in June and it modernizes the existing rules, which had multiple amendments. An LLC is one of several ways to structure a business, and many commercial real estate entrepreneurs form one when doing deals, for tax and other financial reasons.

The changes to the law, says Marks, which include an emphasis on the importance of an operating agreement to define how the LLC is managed, are a long time coming. Florida's LLC statute was initially adopted in 1982. “It's been amended so many times that some parts are in conflict with other parts and not integrated as well as they should be,” he says in a statement. “This not only causes ambiguity but also makes it a difficult statute to navigate. It's like an old quilt, with some patches not sewn together very well.”

Some of the ideas behind the updates were based on provisions in other states, including Delaware, a national leader in accommodating LLCs. Other parts were based on Florida's corporation statute.