Women We Admire is pleased to announce The Top Women Leaders of DC for 2025. As the nation’s capital, Washington DC is a historical and international city known for its diverse population and global influence. DC is home to the largest library in the world, the oldest fish market in the U.S., and over 170 embassies and international cultural centers. The top industries that drive the thriving economy include government, healthcare, communications, technology, retail, and tourism.

Tony Roma’s is a full service, casual dining family restaurant where you can find premier BBQ ribs and steaks in locations across the world. With over 100 family restaurant locations on five continents, Tony Roma’s is one of the most globally recognizable names in the industry. CEO, Mina Haque joins Justin to discuss this growing restaurant industry brand!
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/contendercast-with-justin-honaman/id1253179825?i=1000684703391

Mina Haque, CEO of Tony Roma’s, spent almost nine months on legal due diligence, learning the ins and outs of the corporation, and building strong relationships with franchise owners. This led to her being named CEO of the company, focused on continuing the stabilization and growth of this global brand. She highlights the challenges of maintaining brand consistency and shares her insights through the acquisition, emphasizing the importance of staffing, integration, and franchisee relationships.

Attorney Mina Haque shares some tips for legalities people should know about and do if they want to start a business or side hustle in 2025.

Authored by: Mohaimina Haque, Attorney & General Counsel. Immigration and Business law expert. Adjunct Law Professor. Interim CEO at Tony Roma’s.

How to start an LLC in DC has emerged as a popular business question among entrepreneurs in Washington DC. This surge in popularity can be attributed to the flexibility offered by LLCs, blending the benefits of both corporations and partnerships. They provide liability protection to owners while allowing for efficient tax treatment and operational flexibility.

The objective of this article is to guide aspiring entrepreneurs through the process of establishing an LLC in Washington, D.C. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview, shedding light on the key steps, requirements, and considerations to ensure your business journey in the district starts on a solid foundation.

Forming an LLC in Washington DC

Naming Your DC LLC: The name you choose for your LLC is more than just a label; it’s an embodiment of your brand and the first impression you make on potential clients and partners.

Designating a Registered Agent: Every LLC in the District of Columbia is required to designate a registered agent—a crucial role that ensures your business remains compliant and reachable.

Filing the Articles of Organization: This is the foundational step in how to start an LLC in DC that officially brings your LLC to life in the eyes of the state.

Creating an Operating Agreement: An operating agreement, while not a mandatory requirement in D.C., serves as the backbone of your LLC’s internal operations and governance.

Registering with the IRS and DC Tax and Revenue Office: To ensure your LLC is tax-compliant, registration with both federal and district tax authorities is essential.

Obtaining Necessary Licenses: To legally operate in D.C., your LLC may need various licenses and permits, depending on its nature and location.

Advantages of an LLC in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. offers many benefits for those looking to establish an LLC. One of the standout advantages is the asset protection it offers. Members can rest easy knowing their personal assets are safeguarded from any business liabilities, ensuring a clear demarcation between personal and business finances.

Another significant benefit is the tax advantage. D.C. LLCs enjoy a “pass-through” tax structure. This structure ensures that business profits are taxed just once at the individual member level, sidestepping the double taxation that corporations often grapple with.

Furthermore, the flexibility inherent in the LLC structure cannot be overstated. It empowers members with the autonomy to craft their management structures and operational procedures. This is especially invaluable for businesses that veer away from traditional operational norms.

Challenges to Consider

Forming an LLC in D.C. is not without its challenges. For starters, D.C. LLCs are on the hook for annual fees. These can accumulate over time, so prudent budgeting is essential. Additionally, the district’s commitment to transparency means that LLCs are subject to public disclosure requirements. This might not sit well with businesses that prioritize privacy. Lastly, the dynamic regulatory environment in D.C. necessitates that businesses remain agile, adapting to the ever-changing regulations, licenses, and permits.

Startup Costs

There’s the filing fee associated with submitting the Articles of Organization to the DCRA. This is a foundational step and a one-time cost. If you’re leaning towards a commercial registered agent, be prepared for the accompanying registered agent fees. The cost can fluctuate based on the services offered and the agent’s standing in the industry. Additionally, your business’s nature and its location might necessitate specific licenses, each carrying its license fee.

Ongoing Expenses

The financial commitment doesn’t end with the initial setup. Running an LLC in D.C. brings with it recurring costs. For instance, D.C. mandates that LLCs file a biennial report, which is accompanied by its fee. This report is crucial to keep the district abreast of any business changes. Furthermore, the licenses your business holds will often require renewals, each with its associated cost. And while LLCs do have tax perks, they’re not exempt from tax obligations. Both federal and district-level taxes apply, and timely payments are paramount.

The Imperative of Legal Assistance

Starting an LLC in D.C. is a path that will need legal knowledge for each step. The district’s ever-shifting regulatory framework, coupled with the intricacies of business law, underscores the importance of legal assistance for entrepreneurs.

Business attorneys, with their deep understanding of D.C.’s business regulations, offer invaluable guidance. Their expertise ensures informed decision-making at every juncture. The business formation process is not without potential issues, from choosing a unique LLC name to navigating zoning laws. An experienced attorney can help with these challenges, addressing potential risks and expensive missteps. Moreover, foundational legal documents like the Articles of Organization and the Operating Agreement are pivotal to your LLC. Engaging business lawyers in Washington DC to draft or scrutinize these documents guarantees they are thorough, compliant, and aligned with your business vision.

The regulatory process in D.C. is constantly being updated. Business Attorneys are instrumental in keeping businesses up to speed on legislative changes that could impact them. In the event of disputes, be it with stakeholders, staff, or third parties, legal counsel is indispensable. They safeguard your interests and facilitate efficient dispute resolution. As businesses evolve, so do their legal requisites. Periodic legal reviews ensure that your LLC stays compliant, adapting to any fresh mandates or shifts.

Authored by: Mohaimina Haque, Attorney & General Counsel. Immigration and Business law expert. Adjunct Law Professor. Interim CEO at Tony Roma’s.

This article has originally been featured in Forbes

Law firms have been reimagined with a much leaner real estate footprint, and many of the traditional components have been either outsourced or digitalized. This allows such law firms to revolutionize the way legal services are delivered. Such models offer a win-win for lawyers and clients alike: cut costs by using technology instead of using associates and paralegals, pass those savings on to clients and be more efficient and responsive at the same time.

Given these intrinsic advantages, it should come as no surprise that virtual law firms are on the rise. The shutdown and disruptions caused by Covid have provided a further impetus to this trend. For example, it would take an attorney the whole day to drive to the courthouse, park, wait for the judge to call their case, argue the matter, then drive back to the office. Now the same matter can be handled through Zoom and court filings can be filed online. However, after these measures were instituted, I’ve seen how the opposition to such virtual measures has eroded as the real savings in time and money to all parties concerned have become very clear.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, I already had a thriving virtual firm with an established infrastructure while big law firms were adjusting from traditional model to virtual. This is the year when I represented clients in many different fields: corporate, immigration, product liability case, personal injury, franchise, trademark. With this experience, I’ve witnessed many of these advantages firsthand.

Virtual law firms should aim to offer a number of benefits to clients to create a more cost-effective and efficient option for legal services. For those interested in working a virtual practice, here are some tips for businesses hiring a virtual law firm and what to look out for:

Finding A Virtual Law Firm Right For You

1. Reputation And Reliability

Businesses rely on well-reputed AM-LAW 100 law firms for established presence, reputation, reliability and high success rate. However, there are attorneys out there who can render excellent legal services while keeping the legal budget of a business at a much reasonable extent. But with the rise of virtual legal services, businesses should conduct a thorough research on the attorney, look at the bar website for licensing credentials, schedule a call to assess the knowledge of the attorney, ask for past client testimonials. In legal cases, there is a dearth of predictive analytics to determine the outcome of matter, but oftentimes the outcome is determined by two factors: skills of the practitioners and case management.

2. Scope

The American Bar Association in its preamble for the Model Professional Rules of Conduct states, “As a representative of clients, a lawyer performs various functions.” Businesses must ensure the scope of engagement is memorialized in writing through a legal services agreement. Whether a firm is virtual or brick-and-mortar, this requirement goes without saying. But what has improved is the delivery of such agreements via DocuSign or any Legal CRM software such as CLIO. This exemplifies how a basic tenet of entering into attorney-client relationship can be done online.

3. Capacity

Businesses that need attorneys to be more hands-on should inquire how work assignment is delegated in a virtual law firm. If there is no in-house staff, then ask about the type of outsourcing the virtual law firm does to complete the work.

4. Human Touch

Attorneys from virtual law firms are not only meant to be behind the screen. If you work with an attorney such as for outside general counsel services and the attorney is basically your legal department outsourced, then it is expected for the attorney to visit the client, understand the business models, talk with the employees of the client if need be. Depending on the area of practice of law, the human touch factor varies.

5. Privacy Policy

Ask the attorney of a virtual law firm owner about what type of software they use, what their privacy policy is, how information is transmitted between attorneys and clients.

Conclusion

Businesses, even with a hefty legal budget, can consider virtual law firms, if the firms meet the aforementioned factors, and use the opportunity to spend some of the legal budget elsewhere in the company, such as research and development or other revenue generating department.. While this may be truer with increasing supply cost, inflation, and businesses’ inclination for austerity to manage cash inflow and outflow, nevertheless, businesses may find its cost effective to work with attorneys in a virtual setting.

The image of shiny law firms housed in tall skyscrapers, with well-adorned conference rooms and young associates scrambling and staying until 4 a.m. to work on a brief, is being replaced by attorneys with their own practices using cloud-based software and client management tools to interact with clients. Today’s modern attorneys have technology at their disposal to respond to clients while designing a work-life integration where attorneys can explore their hobbies, spend time with loved ones, practice law and serve clients without the constraints of billable hours. As technology continues to advance, I believe virtual law firms are likely to become an integral part of the legal landscape, permanently reshaping the way legal services are delivered and accessed globally.

A foreign national or a foreign citizen can become a permanent resident of the United States with a “green card.”  A green card is something that a lot of people from other countries want because it allows them to live, work, study legally, and become citizens of the United States after three or five years of holding their permanent residency in the U.S.  The Law Office of Mohaimina Haque, PLLC provides legal representation to people all around the world to apply for green card.

More than one million green cards are issued annually by the United States government.

Depending on the type of green card you apply for and where you are applying from, the processing time for a permanent resident card can take anywhere from a few months to many years.  For example, if you are applying from inside the United States, the waiting period for U.S. citizens’ spouses, immediate relatives, and minor children applying through adjustment of status—known as AOS—from inside the country is currently between 10 – 24 months. The wait time can be significantly longer for spouses of U.S. green card holders, other relatives of U.S. citizens, and employment-based green cards. On the other hand, the wait is noticeably longer for spouses and immediate relatives (parents and minor children) of U.S. citizens applying through consular processing from outside the United States.  Country caps apply to all other categories of green cards, and wait times vary greatly.

If you happen to ask, how much applying for the green card would cost me?  Please schedule a consultation today using this link: Appointment Link to find out about our reasonable legal fees.

If you want to know the government filing fee, the USCIS fee calculator on the following link: https://www.uscis.gov/feecalculator can assist you in determining the exact application fees.

Our firm has flexible payment arrangements that includes “Buy Now Pay Later” via Affirm. It allows to finance your payment to the firm with no hidden fees, no late charges and no surprises.

Practitioners are wondering whether the robust role of the federal government in healthcare fraud and abuse cases will remain the same. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the federal government recovered over $3.3 billion as a result of health care fraud judgments, settlements and additional imposition in health care fraud cases and proceedings. Additionally, in June 2016, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force engaged in a nationwide healthcare fraud takedown that resulted in charges against about 300 individuals including doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals. Rooting out fraud and abuse in healthcare has been a goal of every administration since President Ronald Reagan.

On October 27, 1986, President Reagan signed the False Claims Amendments Act of 1986, which soon became a successful anti-fraud law to deter and fight waste, fraud and abuse in the healthcare field. What makes the False Claims Act (FCA) an important tool to fight any malfeasance in the healthcare system is the qui tam provision that allows whistleblowers to expose fraud against the federal government. In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) amended a portion of the FCA and some of those changes are considered by practitioners to have increased the number of healthcare-related FCA cases. It is undisputed that the FCA allows the government to recover billions of dollars, however, the FCA defense bar is awaiting to see if there would be any change to the FCA-related provision in ACA. During the confirmation hearing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, when Senator Charles Grassley asked him to elaborate his intent regarding the FCA, Attorney General Sessions stated, “in the qui tam provisions and the part of that, I’m aware of those. I think they are valid and an effective method of rooting out fraud and abuse. I even filed one myself one time as a private lawyer….” At this point, this testimony only serves as a mere reverence for FCA, which is not necessarily a clear indication of what will be the effect of qui tam healthcare lawsuits or overall healthcare fraud and abuse enforcement during the Trump Administration.

There are two early signs that are leaning towards the continuity of vigorous fraud and abuse enforcement. First, the budget that has been released by the Trump White House requested an additional $70 million to fund the Healthcare Fraud and Abuse Control program. Trump’s proposed budget plan envisioned a whopping budget cut for the Department of Health and Human Service, but the additional request of funds for fraud prevention is likely an early sign of continuity of the robust fraud and abuse enforcement. Second, recently the Department of Justice has joined a whistleblower lawsuit, United States of America ex rel Benjamin Poehling v. Unitedhealth Group Inc., No. 16-08697 (Cent. Dist. Cal. Sep. 17, 2010), ECF No. 79, against UnitedHealth Group (United) and its subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare Medicare & Retirement—the nation’s largest provider of Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. This suit was originally filed in 2011 by a former United Healthcare finance director under FCA, and in accordance with FCA, this case was sealed for five years while DOJ investigated the claims. The complaint alleged that United Health engaged in an upcoding scheme by falsifying the severity of patients’ illnesses. This case is gaining some attention partly due to practitioners’ curiosity to gauge Attorney General Session’s approach to FCA cases. The New York Times has reported that DOJ’s court notice, in this case, was filed by a lawyer who joined the Civil Division as a part of the Trump administration.

Perhaps it is too early to decipher the Trump Administration’s position on this particular matter. Yet some early signs suggest the effect of FCA is not waning. In sum, ferreting out fraud and abuse has always enjoyed bipartisan support. Moreover, the ACA made significant strides towards that bipartisan goal and allowed to recover a record amount of money to the government coffers, and those strengthened provisions of FCA as enacted in ACA will likely remain a tool for the government to maintain the integrity of the healthcare system.

The False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. §§ 3729-3733, was enacted during the time of the Civil War to combat fraud committed by the suppliers of goods to the Union army. What made the False Claims Act different from other fraud and abuse laws was the inclusion of the qui tam provision that allowed private citizens/whistleblowers (“relators”) to bring a lawsuit against companies and individuals who were defrauding the government. Over the years, the FCA has had many changes, but more recently, the FCA has become the primary tool in combatting federal healthcare fraud and abuse.

Healthcare spending is skyrocketing in the United States. As of the recent data, published by the Center of Medicare and Medicaid services on December 3, 2015, health spending accounted for 17.5 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 2014, U.S. health care spending grew 5.3 percent, reaching $3.0 trillion. It is no surprise that, with this gargantuan amount of healthcare cost, there is renewed attention to exposing health care fraud and abuse. False certification is an archetypal example of fraud and abuse perpetrated by healthcare providers.

False certification is when hospitals, physicians, and healthcare providers misrepresent government health care programs through non-compliance with all the regulations and obligations under their contracts with the government. For example, when providers misrepresent non-covered treatments as medically necessary for the purpose of obtaining payments from federal healthcare programs. However, in legal terms there are two categories of certification: 1) express false certification and 2) implied false certification. Express false certification theory applies when a government payee, “falsely certifies compliance with a particular statute, regulation or contractual term, where compliance is a prerequisite to payment.” United States. ex rel. Conner v. Salina Reg’l Health Ctr., Inc., 543 F.3d 1211, 1217 (10th Cir. 2008). While express false certification may not seem too hard to understand on its face, circuit courts across the country have been split on the application of the implied certification theory of liability. Government and qui tam plaintiffs have argued that just submitting a claim for reimbursement alone implies compliance with federal rules, and the implied false certification theory can be a basis for liability. On the other hand, defense counsels have argued that implied certification creates an excessive burden on defendants, especially when defendants have to pay treble damages for noncompliance of a contractual or regulatory term as conditions of payment.

On June 16, 2016, the Supreme Court in Universal Health Services v. United States ex. rel. Escobar, 136 S. Ct. 1989 (2016) unanimously held that implied certification theory can be a basis for FCA liability, thus resolving a circuit split. Under the Universal Healthcare decision, “when a defendant submitting a claim makes specific representations about the goods or services provided, but fails to disclose noncompliance with material statutory, regulatory, or contractual requirements that make those representations misleading with respect to those goods or services” 136 S. Ct. at 1994.

However, the Supreme Court limited the wide application of the implied certification theory. First, when a government payee submits a claim for government payment, the claim must not “merely request payment,” but also makes “specific representation about the goods or services provided.” Second, the Supreme Court applied the common-law rule to misrepresentation, where “half-truth representations that state the truth . . . . while omitting critical qualifying information- can be an actionable misrepresentation.” 136 S. Ct. at 1994. In a footnote, Justice Thomas gave examples of tort law, contract law and securities law to demonstrate the example of common law misrepresentation, which is very much the same in understanding misrepresentation in the FCA context. Third, the Supreme Court pronounced that the materiality standard is demanding. The Court further went on to state that when assessing materiality under FCA, it’s not dispositive that every violation of express condition of payment can trigger liability. Id. at 2003. The Supreme Court identified additional situations on what can trigger materiality, and in sum, it is dependent on the specific context.

The much-anticipated Universal Health Services decision resolved the circuit split, and at the same time would thwart attempts by plaintiffs and the government to bring cases for a “garden variety of breaches of contract or regulatory violation.” Overall, this decision is a win for plaintiffs and government because a healthcare provider can still be facing implied certification liabilities under FCA for making a fraudulent claim for payment from the federal healthcare programs, but at the same time, defense counsels have assurance in light of this decision that minor regulatory and contract violations would not result in huge liabilities. Lower courts will determine what lies ahead in the wake of this decision, whether qui tam plaintiffs will have difficulty pleading facts sufficient to prove the test outlined by the Universal Health Services court or whether the defense community has these new guardrails to shield them from unsubstantiated implied false certification liability.

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