Understand
Listen for the legal issue and the broader consequence. Identify the client’s priorities, the unknowns, and the decisions that cannot wait.
About Mountain State Attorneys
Legal counsel should see the whole landscape.
A case may be defined by a legal claim, but a client experiences its effect through work, family, ownership, reputation, time, money, and future choices. Mountain State Attorneys was built to connect those layers before strategy hardens around an incomplete view.
The idea behind the firm
Modern legal problems deserve a more connected model.
Mountain State Attorneys is the public-facing name of AVantGarde Law, LLC. The firm was founded on a straightforward premise: legal work should be rigorous without becoming detached from the person or organization that must live with the result.
That requires more than knowing rules and procedure. Counsel must understand the client’s objective, the operational or family context, the evidence, the available forums, the cost of delay, and the consequences of each realistic option. The legal strategy then becomes part of a larger decision process.
The firm’s primary focus is criminal defense and civil litigation, supported by business and transactional counsel and family-law representation. Those practices are distinct, but the perspective connecting them is consistent: define the real problem, build the record, and pursue a result that remains useful beyond the immediate proceeding.
How we work
Clarity, strategy, execution, reassessment.
Design
Build a strategy around the record, the law, the available forum, the client’s risk tolerance, and the outcome that still has practical value.
Execute & reassess
Carry out the plan with disciplined communication and preparation, then adjust when evidence, leverage, deadlines, or circumstances change.
A founder’s perspective
Courtroom discipline informed by executive responsibility.
Founder and managing partner Joshua R. Kotter brings experience from criminal defense, civil litigation, business counsel, healthcare general-counsel roles, and executive leadership. That combination shapes the firm’s emphasis on evidence, decision quality, and implementation.
Meet Joshua R. Kotter“The legal answer is only complete when the client can understand the choice, the risk, and the path forward.”
Mountain State Attorneys
Begin with the problem as you see it
We will help identify the legal path.
You do not need to arrive with the correct category or a finished strategy.