Expert Business Lawyers in Melbourne

What does a Business Lawyer Do?

A Business lawyer, or sometimes referred to as a commercial lawyer, will draft documents of all different kinds. This can include commercial agreements such as distribution agreements, franchise agreements, commercial leases, terms and conditions of trade, partnership agreements, shareholder agreements, intellectual property agreements and sale of business agreements, just to name a few.

Your business lawyer will also review all of the above types of documents, where they have been drafted by a lawyer acting for another party. In such circumstances, amendments are typically made so as to suit the circumstances at hand to protect a client’s interests.

How do you find a good business lawyer?

As with any profession not every business lawyer is a good one or an appropriate one for the job at hand. The best way to find a lawyer that works for you is to talk to that person and to determine whether their experience matches your problem.

Savvy business owners want someone who is experienced in dealing with the issue that is relevant to them. For example, if you need legal advice about a lease, you would do well to make sure that you’re dealing with an experienced commercial leasing lawyer.

If you have franchise agreement reviewed, it is imperative that the lawyer advising you understands the ins and outs of franchising. This is because not all lawyers are talented in all areas of business law. Areas such as Franchising require particular skill sets.

Not only should you check the skills of the lawyer you are talking to but also check the wider commercial experience of the firm and other lawyers. Commercial lawyers work within a wider network of litigation and property lawyers as well. Having support from a strong commercial, property and litigation team makes a difference in the outcome.

We have seen too many disputes over the years whereby clients come to us having her documents supposedly “reviewed” by another lawyer. In reality the advice was very superficial in nature and did not identify the risks and issues with various clauses within the agreement.

This then contributed to a dispute, which had the client known the full effect of a particular clause, the client would not have entered into the agreement in the format that then agreement was in.

If an agreement is important to the functioning of your business, it is important to get a skilled commercial lawyer to review it thoroughly. A good business lawyer will rigorously assess the clauses in a particular agreement, discuss those with his or her client and then require certain changes with the other party to suit as necessary.

How Can a Solicitor Help a Business?

A good business lawyer will look holistically at a client’s business. Understanding a client’s business can assist in providing legal advice which is relevant to the business.

A solicitor can make a business owner alive to the blind spots from a legal perspective. There are just so many “traps” in documents that are provided to business owners by other parties, on the one hand. On the other hand, every business will face issues around employment law and what to do in the ever-changing landscape of dealing with legal issues that pertain to employees.

A good business lawyer can help in a preventative way. It is better to avoid a dispute and is better to enter into good commercial agreements wherever possible.

If things do go wrong, a solicitor will be able to help the business by dealing with the dispute in the most effective way. In such circumstances, you want to ensure that the business lawyer handling the dispute is experienced in dealing with that specific type of dispute.

Developing a good relationship with a solicitor, or better still, a law firm with a with teams of solicitors who have skill in the various areas of law that relate to businesses, will usually be a very good investment in preventing problems.

The new result is that it will give you a more seamless and professional operation and otherwise giving you peace of mind that you can focus on the business of making the business profitable, rather than having to worry about whether you are legally compliant. In the same way that you get a mechanic to ensure that your car is running properly and safe, having a good solicitor on hand will help ensure that your business has minimal interruption with legal problems: firstly, by prevention (where possible) and secondly, by proper care and attention by a skilled practitioner.