Areas of Practice.

Commercial Transaction Advising

  • Successfully negotiating your best outcome requires extensive experience and an understanding of the issues between the parties in order to identify their key drivers and negotiating levers. Every matter will be different and we work closely with our clients to ensure an optimal outcome.

Corporate Governance & Management

  • Establishing and running a company or incorporated association requires careful consideration of the role and functions and matching the specific type of entity to the requirements of the client. Critically it is important to recognise that the incorporated entity and its officers will have initial and ongoing obligations under the law, including the Corporations Act and state-by-state incorporated associations legislation.

  • Selection of directors, company secretaries and other officers is critical to the successful operation of the entity with appropriate expertise and any actual or potential conflicts needing to be properly considered.

  • Government’s can often make the mistake of appointing government employees or officers on the boards of companies or incorporated associations that have been established to deliver a government funded program, inadvertently putting that government employee/officer in an unacceptable position of conflict between the duties they owe to the government and those owed to the company/association. We can assist in resolving this issue or better still, in ensuring it does not occur.

  • Incorporated entities have strict initial and ongoing compliance obligations under (variously) the Corporations Act, incorporated associations legislation and the Australian Charities and Not-for Profits Commission Act. The laws can be complex and onerous with both civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. We can assist in providing company secretarial services and ensure the officers of the entity are properly advised of their obligations.

Government Procurement & Probity

  • All governments have rules, guidelines or legislation that regulates their procurement practices. These specific government requirements will often overlap with and sometimes displace what might be considered to be best practice in commercial contract negotiations. However the procurements requirements provide an important basis for accountability and proper decision making in government and allow government to defend its processes where they might be called into question.

  • Having advised both the Commonwealth and ACT Governments we have a sound understanding of the requirements of government procurement frameworks.

  • We can provide expert probity advice to government procurement processes. Probity advice is an integral part of significant procurements and important to safeguard to the integrity of the process where complex issues of process arise or the way forward with an issue is not necessarily clear to the negotiating and legal team who are intrinsically involved in negotiating the best deal and perhaps not as focussed on process.

  • Best practice would dictate that the probity role and legal advice, in significant government procurements, should be undertaken by separate and unrelated parties.