Business Lawyers: directory of firms

Commercial work is open-ended unless somebody bounds it. Start by writing down the transaction and the deadline, then ask the practice to scope the work against that: what is included, what is excluded, what will be charged separately, and who is doing each part.

Ask for a staged approach on anything substantial. Advice first, then drafting, then negotiation. That lets you stop if the deal falls over, and it gives you a real estimate for each stage rather than one figure for an unknown amount of work.

Ask also what the practice needs from you. Most cost overruns in commercial matters come from lawyers reconstructing facts the client already had in a folder.

Most clients get a written costs disclosure under the Legal Profession Uniform Law. Commercial and government clients are an exception: a practice is not required to give them a costs disclosure statement. In practice that means a small business is often relying on the costs agreement itself rather than on a statutory disclosure, so read it properly.

Ask for the same information anyway: an estimate of total costs, the basis of calculation, hourly rates by person, what disbursements will be incurred, and how often you will be billed. Ask whether fixed fees are available for defined pieces of work such as a shareholders agreement or a set of terms of trade.

Where litigation is on the horizon, ask about the costs consequences of losing, because in court, unlike at the Fair Work Commission, an unsuccessful party commonly pays a portion of the other side's costs.

Before trading, check what your specific activity requires. Company registration and business name registration with ASIC are the baseline. Beyond that, licensing is mostly state based and industry specific, covering building, liquor, food, labour hire, security, motor dealing, real estate and financial services, each with its own regulator.

Consumer-facing businesses carry obligations under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be contracted out of, including consumer guarantees and rules about unfair contract terms in standard form contracts. Businesses handling personal information carry privacy obligations. Neither of these depends on whether you are big.

Business and corporate law, commercial law, small business, competition and consumer law and leasing law are all separately searchable practice areas on Victoria's Register of Lawyers, and other states publish similar searches. That granularity is useful: a general commercial practice and a competition specialist are different animals.

For recurring work, ask what the practice does on a fixed fee and what it will not. For a one-off transaction that will define the business for a decade, such as a shareholders agreement or a business sale, pay for the specialist and treat it as part of the deal cost.

A shareholders or partnership agreement is the one that comes up again and again. Without it, two people who agreed everything verbally have no mechanism for valuing a share, breaking a deadlock or dealing with a partner who stops working. The argument then runs in court at a cost far beyond what the agreement would have been.

Second is terms of trade: no written payment terms, no retention of title, no personal guarantee, and then an insolvent customer. Third is the contractor who was really an employee, which surfaces as an underpayment claim, a superannuation liability or an unfair dismissal application.

Fourth is the lease nobody read, particularly the make-good obligation at the end and the assignment clause that blocks a sale of the business.

Accountants handle tax structuring, compliance and financial reporting, and they are often the first person a small business asks about structure. Lawyers handle legal liability, documents that have to be enforceable, and anything that might end up in front of a court or regulator.

The overlap is real and the best outcomes usually come from both being in the room when the structure is set. Legal professional privilege applies to legal advice from a lawyer, which is a practical difference that matters if a dispute or an audit follows.