Hovav Biton Law Office & Notaries

Hovav Biton, Law Offices and Notaries (HB) is one of the leading law firms in northern Israel. The firm serves as a one-stop-shop for legal services, and provides its clients services in the fields of civil, business and commercial law, including in matters of insolvency, civil-commercial litigation, real-estate, contracts, administrative law, planning and zoning, corporations, labor law, municipal taxation, and tenders. HB’s uniqueness lies in the combination between its knowledge and its experience in a variety of adjacent legal fields and a broad business perspective. The broad understanding enables it to provide creative solutions for usual and unusual problems, with “out-of-the-box” thinking and optimal solutions. HB employs a skilled and proficient team, which includes 13 lawyers, an administrative staff and support teams in the fields of real-estate, banking and execution. Each of the team’s members has unique expertise, while simultaneously working in a synergistic collaboration among themselves and with the clients.

HB works efficiently, while adjusting the nature and scope of the legal service to the clients’ needs and personally customizing the relevant service offerings, from ongoing legal counsel and support, through the management of numerous collection cases or small debts, and up to the management of complex cases in the courts. The familiarity with the players and the “rules of the game”, the proficiency in legal and regulatory developments and the firm’s forward-looking approach enable it to spot opportunities and alert its clients.

Practice Areas

Insolvency, Companies Rehabilitation and Management of Distressed Companies – the firm manages stay-of-proceedings, receiverships, liquidations, bankruptcies, debt and creditors’ arrangements and companies rehabilitations. HB’s vast experience enables it to identify the economic and legal situation of the company and its owners, and to construct a strategy that would direct them to the best proceeding for their interests. Afterwards, the firm applies its techniques, including direct negotiations with creditors without resorting to legal proceedings in order to implement the strategy for achieving the optimal solution. Thus, the firm reached debt arrangements amounting to NIS hundreds of millions in the past few years, with shareholders’ control of the company and return to full operationality, for the benefit of all parties. And thus, in other cases, the firm fought uncompromisingly in order to defend the rights of its clients, and reaped significant successes for them.

Civil-Commercial Law – HB represents its clients in courts in various types of tribunals and disputes concerning companies, contracts and agreements, wills and estates, real-estate and labor law, and also in transactions negotiations and the preparation of various contracts and agreements. In this framework, the firm is skilled in finding the most efficient course for settling the dispute, with wise use of commercial arbitrations, mediations and the formulation of a creative solution which benefits all of the stakeholders. The dept. is an expert in the energy and infrastructures fields, where it accompanies various renewable energy and fuels transactions. HB represents clients before diverse authorities and entities, and manages negotiations with commercial companies, and facilitates the financing processes for the projects, in order to construct an efficient and effective transaction as well as cost-effective and successful projects. In recent years, the firm has been leading a series of transactions in the gas stations, natural gas and solar energy fields, while constructing the transactions’ outlines and providing end-to-end legal facilitation. Some of the significant transactions include purchasing of fueling operations, PV stations sites, and natural gas operations.

Real-estate and Lands – the firm provides full services offering as a one-stop-shop, encompassing all real-estate aspects and related matters. HB accompanies initiators from the location and purchasing of land, through planning proceedings for receiving all permits and approvals while maximizing the project’s potential, negotiations with all service providers, handling finance aspects with the relevant entities, legal support during construction and up to sale and registering the purchasers’ rights.

Planning and Zoning – the firm handles planning and zoning, taxation and building defects claims. The firm represents clients before all the authorities and tribunals, including local and regional planning and building and appeal committees, local and planning authorities, tax authorities, government agencies and in the courts.

Mehir La’Mishtaken – the firm was one of the pioneers of this field and its vast experience, owing to its early entry, positions it at the forefront of these projects, in northern Israel. HB’s real-estate operations include facilitation of more than 1,500 units, including conventional construction, settlement expansion and “Mehir La’Mishtaken”, as well as significant business and commercial real-estate projects.

Municipal Taxation – The firm provides municipal taxation services, with an expertise in refund claims. HB has vast experience and an impressive record of receiving refunds for funds that were unlawfully demanded or collected by various local authorities, in sums of up to NIS hundreds of thousands. The firm manages administrative and legal proceedings concerning municipal charges and fees, including betterment and city tax, through direct negotiations with the authorities, alternative dispute resolution methods and court litigation.

Tenders – HB is supporting tender requesters and submitters in various RFTs, from counsel in the preparation of RFTs and tenders, and up to defending or appealing the RFT’s result. The firm’s extensive business and operational experience enables in to support and counsel its clients from a perspective that encompasses all aspects, in order to lead for an eventual optimal and economic contract between the parties and a successful execution of the subject matter.

Labor law – the firm provides legal counsel for employees and employers, including representation in all types of administrative and legal proceedings before all the courts.

Administrative Litigation – the firm represents clients in legal and administrative proceedings (including appeals, objections, hearings and direct correspondence with the authorities) before all sorts of authorities, including local and municipal authorities, government agencies, licensing and planning entities and RFT committees and including all types of reliefs (monetary, restraining orders and injunctions, temporary and declaratory reliefs).

Adv. Hovav Biton, Founder and Owner

The firm’s Owner and Founder has an LL.B. from Sheffield University and was admitted to the Israeli Bar in 1999. During more than 20 years of experience, he facilitated hundreds of significant transactions, alongside counseling in insolvency and companies’ rehabilitation cases, representation in material legal disputes and ongoing legal servicing of leading companies and agencies. His experience creates integrated commercial-business-legal know-how that provides the client with a balanced and comprehensive perspective of all the necessary considerations for making significant and critical legal, business and financial decision. From the recognition that this integrative approach is a cornerstone of modern legal practice, Adv. Biton imparts combined legal-business knowledge to all of the firm’s employees.