Houston Business Contract Lawyers

Drafting, Reviewing, and Negotiating Contracts for Texas Businesses Since 1987

Hendershot Cowart P.C. is a Houston law firm that drafts, reviews, and negotiates business contracts for Texas companies and healthcare practices. Our Houston contract lawyers can identify the provisions that create exposure, redline them, and supply alternative language you can take back to the other side.

Most reviews are handled for a flat fee, in a single consultation, with a turnaround of 24 to 48 business hours.

We have practiced Texas business law since 1987 – nearly 40 years – and have drafted, reviewed, and negotiated thousands of business contracts in that time. 

Have a contract and a deadline? Let us read the fine print before you sign. Call (713) 783-3110 or contact us onlineto schedule a review.

On This Page

• Contracts and Agreements We Draft and Review 
• Contract Review Before You Sign 
• How Much Does a Contract Review Cost? 
• What to Expect When You Hire Us 
• Drafting and Negotiating Your Own Contracts 
• Agreements Between Owners and Partners 
• Protecting Confidential Information and Client Relationships 
• What Makes a Contract Legally Binding in Texas? 
• When a Contract Is Breached 
• Why Hendershot Cowart P.C.? 
• Contract Law FAQs

We draft and review all types of business agreements, including operating and governance documents, workforce and confidentiality agreements, commercial and vendor contracts, healthcare agreements, and construction contracts.

Operating and governance documents

• Partnership agreements – voting rights, profit distribution, authority, and what happens when a partner wants out.
• Shareholder agreements – transfer restrictions, minority protections, and governance for a corporation.
• Buy-sell agreements – how an ownership interest is valued and bought when an owner dies, leaves, or is removed.
• LLC operating agreements – drafted alone or as part of our LLC formation services, which include preparing and filing your certificate of formation with the Texas Secretary of State and acquiring your tax identification number. We can also serve as your registered agent at no additional fee.

Workforce and confidentiality

• Employment agreements – compensation structure, bonus and commission formulas, termination language, and governing law.
• Independent contractor agreements – scope, payment, work product ownership, and classification language that holds up.
• Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements – what information is covered, for how long, and what a breach entitles you to.
• Non-compete agreements and non-solicitation agreements – drafted to meet the requirements Texas courts actually enforce.

Commercial and vendor

• Business purchase agreements – asset and equity purchases, including as part of a merger or acquisition.
• Service, supplier, and vendor agreements – deliverables, performance standards, payment terms, and termination rights. When these break down, our supply and vendor dispute team handles the fallout.
• Licensing agreements – scope of the license, royalties, territory, and what happens at termination.
• Franchise agreements and FDD reviews – before you sign a franchise disclosure document you cannot negotiate later.
• Intellectual property and trade secret protection – trademark and copyright ownership, work-for-hire agreements, assignment clauses, and the confidentiality measures that keep a trade secret protectable.

Healthcare

• Medical contracts and agreements – structured to comply with state and federal requirements, or to fall within a recognized safe harbor.
• Physician employment agreements – productivity-based compensation, tail insurance, and non-compete terms specific to healthcare practitioners. We have reviewed 517 of these since January 2021.
• Management services agreements and MSOs, billing agreements, and space and equipment leases – the agreements behind a compliant medical practice set-up.

Construction

• Construction contracts – prime contracts, subcontracts, change order procedures, and payment provisions.

A contract review is not a proofread. A thorough contract review examines what you are promising, how the agreement can be terminated, which rights you are signing away, where a dispute would be decided, who owns the work product, and what the document leaves out. Obvious red flags are the easy part. The harder work is in the terms that read as boilerplate and then govern your business for years.

Here is what we look at:

• What you are promising. Deliverables, performance standards, and deadlines, stated with enough precision that no one can argue about them later.
• What happens if it ends early. Termination rights, notice periods, and what each side walks away with. Missing or vague termination language is one of the most common reasons a routine agreement becomes a lawsuit.
• What you are giving up without realizing it. Exclusivity, automatic renewal, assignment restrictions, indemnification, non-compete, and limitation of liability clauses.
• Where a dispute would be decided. Arbitration clauses, governing law, and venue. If you work across state lines or contract with an out-of-state party, this one provision can determine whether you are handling disputes at home or in some far-flung jurisdiction.
• Who owns what you create. Work product and intellectual property assignment, especially important in technology, medical, and creative fields.
• What is not in the document at all. The gap is often the risk.

We redline the provisions that expose you and give you specific alternative language, so you are negotiating from an informed and empowered position.

We review most contracts for one flat fee. That fee is set by the length and number of documents involved, and it includes a one-on-one consultation with the attorney who reviewed your agreement.

You will know the number before any work starts. Call us at (713) 783-3110 with a description of the documents, and we will quote the review.

Work beyond the consultation itself is billed separately, and the attorney will quote that work during your consultation, before it begins. Learn more about how we charge.

Here's how the process works:

1. Call or submit the contact form. A member of our lead intake team will follow up to discuss your situation and schedule, and quote the review.
2. Send us the documents. Our intake team will ask you to forward the contract, along with any questions or concerns you want covered so that the attorney can prepare in advance.
3. Meet with the attorney. Contract reviews take place in a virtual consultation or teleconference lasting up to one hour, usually scheduled within a day or two of your inquiry.
4. Get recommendations and know the weak points. You leave knowing what the document says, which provisions to push back on, and what else should be covered.
5. Decide what happens next. If you want us to edit or negotiate the agreement, you will receive a quote for that work before it starts.

There is no rule that a lawyer has to draft your contract, and plenty of business owners start with a template downloaded from the internet. Being careful with money is not the mistake. The mistake is assuming a fill-in-the-blank document written for no particular business will hold up for yours. 

Our attorneys routinely review and redline existing agreements to help you tailor the agreement to your business and industry. Litigating contract disputes for nearly 40 years has shown us exactly which clauses turn into lawsuits: vague deliverables, missing termination rights, poorly defined default terms, and notice provisions. We build that knowledge into every contract we review or edit.

Ready to get your agreements in order? Call (713) 783-3110 or contact us online.

Texas law does not require a written agreement for a partnership, LLC, or a corporation to exist. Without one, though, your business is governed by the state's default rules rather than by anything you and your partners decided.

Those defaults cover control, profit distribution, and exit rights. They rarely match what a specific group of owners would have chosen for themselves, and nobody discovers the mismatch until there is money or a departure on the table.

A written partnership agreement, shareholder agreement, or LLC operating agreement puts those decisions back in your hands: who votes on what, how an owner exits, how a buyout is valued, and who has authority to sign contracts and distribute money.

We also draft these documents for businesses that are already operating without them. 

If your business depends on client relationships, proprietary methods, or confidential pricing structures, the agreements you sign with employees and contractors are what stand between those trade secrets and a competitor.

Texas enforces these agreements, but only when they are drafted correctly. A restriction must be tied to an otherwise valid agreement, supported by real consideration such as access to confidential information or specialized training, and reasonable in duration, geography, and the type of activity restricted. Overbroad restrictions get narrowed by the court rather than enforced as written.

• Non-compete agreements restrict where a former employee can work. Healthcare practitioners are subject to special protections, recently enhanced under a 2025 state law.
• Non-solicitation agreements are narrower. They do not restrict where someone works, only whether they can approach your clients or recruit your staff.
• Confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements define what information is protected and for how long.

When someone violates one of these, our business litigation team handles non-compete violations and other contract breaches through injunctive relief and monetary damages.

Under Texas law, a valid contract requires four elements:

1. An offer.
2. Acceptance of that offer.
3. A meeting of the minds – both parties genuinely agreed to the same thing.
4. Mutual consideration – each side gives up something of value, such as money in exchange for a service.

Even with all four in place, an agreement can still fail. A contract is not enforceable against someone who lacked the capacity to enter it, including minors and adults who were incapacitated at the time. An agreement to do something illegal is not enforceable at all.

A written contract is not always required in Texas, but certain agreements must be in writing to be enforced, and a verbal agreement is only as good as your ability to prove its terms. Get it in writing.

Sometimes the other side stops paying, stops performing, or stops returning calls. Sometimes you are the one who received the demand letter, with a deadline attached.

The same firm that drafts your agreements handles them when they break down. Our business litigation team pursues and defends breach of contract disputes through demand letters, negotiation, arbitration, or trial, and helps you weigh whether the cost of litigation is worth what you stand to recover.

If you are already in a dispute, start there. Learn more about breach of contract and contract disputes.

Most firms make you choose between a law practice that helps you form and build your business, or one that defends it when things go wrong. We have done both since 1987.

That matters more in contract work than almost anywhere else. A firm that only drafts contracts has never watched its own language get tested in court. A firm that only litigates arrives after the document is already signed. We do both, so the agreements we draft close the gaps that can lead to litigation.

In the past five years alone, we have:

• Reviewed or drafted more than 1,000 business and medical contracts for Texas companies.
• Helped launch 240 new Texas businesses, including drafting governing documents.
• Resolved close to 1,000 business disputes and litigation matters.

We are based in Houston and represent clients throughout the greater Houston area, including Katy, Sugar Land, Richmond, Rosenberg, Pearland, Conroe, and The Woodlands, with offices in Austin and San Antonio by appointment.

Call (713) 783-3110 or contact us onlineto schedule a consultation.

Talk to a Houston contract lawyer before you sign. Call (713) 783-3110 or contact us onlineto schedule your consultation.