Built in 2019 around a better way to fight

Dana Beckett has spent close to twenty years in commercial litigation, and she started Beckett & Moss in 2019 on a simple conviction: a business in a dispute deserves counsel who thinks like an owner, not just a litigator. Her practice runs the length of a commercial fight, from the first demand letter through trial and, when it is the smarter move, through the settlement that ends things early.

Before founding the firm, Dana litigated contract, business-tort, and shareholder cases for companies across West Michigan, from family manufacturers to fast-growing service firms. Clients come back to her for the same reason each time: she gives them a straight read on the merits, the cost, and the odds before they spend a dollar, and she never lets a case drift when a decision is what the moment calls for.

Dana is a member of the State Bar of Michigan and is admitted in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan. She built the firm around plain talk and fixed expectations because she believes clients should understand their own case as well as their lawyer does.

Julian Moss leads the firm's employment practice, and he works both sides of the same problem: defending employers when a claim lands, and building the policies and agreements that stop the next one. He is equally at home arguing a summary-judgment motion in a discrimination case and sitting with a founder to rewrite a handbook that would not survive a second look.

Julian spent the first decade of his career representing Michigan employers in wage, discrimination, and wrongful-termination matters before joining Dana to build Beckett & Moss. He is known for translating employment law out of the statute book and into decisions a manager can actually make on a Tuesday afternoon, which is usually where lawsuits are won or lost.

Julian is a member of the State Bar of Michigan. He counsels clients to treat every termination and every handbook as a document that a plaintiff's lawyer may one day read aloud, and he drafts accordingly. His view is that good employment counsel is measured in the disputes that never happen.

Camille Duarte focuses on the counseling side of employment law: the workplace investigations, the day-to-day advice, and the difficult personnel decisions that companies would rather get right the first time than defend later. When a client calls with a harassment complaint, a leave question, or a reduction in force, Camille is often the first voice on the line.

She came to the firm from an in-house-adjacent advisory role, where she learned that employers do not want a lecture on the law, they want a defensible answer they can act on today. Camille runs investigations that hold up under scrutiny, documents them the way a court would want to see, and helps managers act decisively without stepping on a legal landmine.

Camille is a member of the State Bar of Michigan. She is the person on the team most likely to catch the small procedural misstep, the missed notice or the undocumented warning, that turns a routine decision into a lawsuit. Her work is quiet by design, and it is why a great deal of the firm's employment work never reaches a courtroom.

Theo Lindqvist works across the firm's contract and litigation practices, drafting the commercial agreements a business runs on and helping litigate the disputes that arise when an agreement is tested. He likes the through-line between the two: a contract is only as good as the fight it survives, and he drafts with that day in mind.

Theo joined Beckett & Moss early in his career and has grown into the associate who handles the close reading, the contract that has to be negotiated clause by clause, the record that has to be assembled before a motion, the deposition outline that has to anticipate every answer. He is meticulous with detail and clear in his writing, two traits that matter more in commercial practice than they are given credit for.

Theo is a member of the State Bar of Michigan. He believes the best commercial lawyering is invisible: the clause that quietly prevents a dispute, the record so clean the other side settles. He is drawn to the parts of a matter where careful work early saves a client from an expensive fight later.

Renee Tanaka runs the operations of Beckett & Moss, which means she runs the parts of a client's experience that have nothing to do with the law and everything to do with whether the firm feels well run. She manages intake, scheduling, billing, and the steady communication that makes working with a litigation firm feel orderly rather than opaque.

Renee came to the firm from a background in professional-services operations, and she brought a conviction with her: clients in a dispute are already carrying enough uncertainty, and the firm they hire should remove friction rather than add it. She is usually the first person a new client speaks with and the one who makes sure a matter never stalls for want of a signature, a document, or an answer.

Renee keeps the firm's flat-fee and litigation-budget commitments honest, tracking scope so the numbers a client is quoted are the numbers a client sees. Her standard is simple: no surprises on the invoice, and no client left wondering what happens next.