About THE Practice
Practice Areas
- Business formation, capitalization, and strategic planning.
- Business mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations, and sales.
- Contracts, employment counselling, and other general business matters.
- Real estate acquisition, financing, and disposition.
- Real estate development and construction contracts.
The Approach
Three fundamentals guide our work at Drumm & King:
- Risk is to be managed, not avoided. An objective advisor can help you assess business and legal risks, and a good negotiator can help you mitigate them, but risk-taking is a part of every successful business or real estate venture. We understand that. We don't tell our clients "no," but rather "the potential consequences of that action are...."
- Avoid sweeping things under the rug and kicking cans down the road. Business and real estate principals should have awkward “what if” conversations and consider contingencies early on, before issues arise. If they address these questions head-on, they’ll have better results and better relationships down the road when it comes time to divide the pot of gold—or shovel the pile of manure.
- The best legal work will not fix a bad business deal. No matter how good a set of transaction documents may be, they can only mitigate…not eliminate…the consequences of a fundamentally flawed transaction. That’s why we bring our own “real world” management experience to the table to help clients identify transaction risks through due diligence and negotiation strategies that focus on the most likely and most potentially damaging risks, rather than on remote or inconsequential ones. We would rather help clients avoid problems than work their way out of them.
If we share these three principles in common, we can do great things together.
Gateway to an Interdisciplinary Team of Professionals
Our firm may at first appear to be just a couple of transaction lawyers, but those lawyers' network includes numerous trusted attorneys who are experienced in litigation, intellectual property, wealth planning, taxation, and other specialties that compliment his practice, as well as non-attorney business consultants, engineers, architects and planners, accounting and finance professionals, bankers and brokers, and other specialists that most businesses and real estate enterprises need on their team. If a matter falls outside their expertise, they can introduce other professionals who can handle it efficiently, and who will approach the matter with the same value-conscious, outcomes-based orientation they share.
THE ATTORNEYS
Robert J. Drumm, Attorney and Principal
Robert J. Drumm began practicing law in 2002, graduating with top honors from the University of Kansas School of Law after working several years in the printing and packaging industries. He holds a Bachelor's degree and a Master's degree from Texas Tech University. Robert is licensed to practice in Kansas and Missouri. He practiced under his wholly owned firm Stranger Creek Advisors, LLC until inviting Christie to join him as a partner to form Drumm & King LLC.
Robert brings a unique background to his transaction practice areas. He began his legal career as an associate in one of the region's leading real estate practice groups at a large Kansas City law firm, and continued in business transactions with a large international firm. Robert then served as associate general counsel to a publicly-traded real estate investment trust, where he ran over $2 billion in acquisitions, dispositions and financing; he advised asset management and development teams; and he assisted in corporate governance and securities compliance. He also managed outside counsel and provided strategic guidance to the company in disputes ranging from small landlord-tenant cases to high-stakes litigation. Since 2017, Robert has been focused on his private practice with Stranger Creek Advisors and now Drumm & King.
Robert’s background also includes five years as an entrepreneur. He built a small, home-based packaging supply company into a well-known and respected supplier serving the craft beverage industry, with a nationally-focused sales staff and a traditional bricks-and-mortar presence. After selling the business to investors from a private equity group, he refocused on his transactions practice and worked both independently and with a middle-market firm in Kansas City.
Robert’s work as in-house counsel for a publicly-traded company, as a small business owner, and as a real estate investor helps him stay focused on the real-world objectives behind legal matters—whether they be transactions, compliance issues, or litigation—and he especially enjoys working with entrepreneurs in planning for growth, in addressing challenges, and in smoothing out the inevitable transitions in the life cycle of a business or a real estate asset. He also enjoys working with churches and charitable organizations in real estate and organizational management projects.
Most of Robert’s time outside the office is devoted to his wife and five children, and to activities at his family’s third-generation farm in Coffey County, Kansas.
Christie M. King, Attorney
Christie M. King practiced law with the corporate securities practice group of a large St. Louis Firm in the 1990s after graduating near the top of her class at the Washington University School of Law. She holds a bachelor’s degree from St. Mary’s College, South Bend, Indiana, and she is licensed to practice in Missouri and Kansas (active) and Illinois (inactive). She worked with Robert as an attorney at Stranger Creek Advisors for almost seven years before partnering with him to form Drumm & King.
Christie worked as an associate in the corporate practice group of a large St. Louis Firm before taking twenty-one years off from practice to raise a family and work in both in higher education and K-12 education administration, most recently as a Vice Principal of a private school in Kansas City from August 2014 to the 2021. She resumed her legal practice in 2019 and works with the firm’s clients in business formation and governance, contracts and general corporate matters, and small business, real estate and small business transactions.
Christie’s background as an administrator (and a mother) complements her legal training, giving her the ability to manage parties with disparate interests and varied perspectives and to take care of the seemingly-small-but-important details that keep a client organization running. Her tenacity and attention to the small details makes her the perfect counterpart to Robert's focus on legal structuring and business strategy.
Most of Christie’s time outside the practice is devoted to her husband and four children.