Business leaders know how important a deal can be to their company’s future.

They ‘live’ the deal and inevitably the highs and lows of the negotiations assume great importance in their lives.

Adroit Lawyers understand that passionate dedication and the need for legal services that hit the target, on-time and on-budget.

Call us if you want a lawyer who has walked in your shoes, delivered major deals and understands commercial goals and the pressures you face.

We’ll help you achieve!

The Australian legal profession in broad terms is comprised of lawyers who are either barristers (who mainly do court work) or solicitors (who do more general matters).

The larger law firms have grown exponentially in recent decades and many of those firms now have hundreds of employed solicitors. The scale of their operations (and the resultant overheads) may be one reason legal fees have steadily risen in recent times.

In response to the rising cost of briefing external solicitors, many larger companies have formed internal legal departments headed by a General Counsel who is supported by a team of lawyers bearing the ‘Legal Counsel’ title.

Some companies consider it advantageous to have an in-house legal team who are more intimately aligned with the company and its commercial objectives. The belief is that this leads to a deeper understanding of the company’s commercial imperatives and deal-making goals.

Adroit Lawyers believe a significant gap exists in Australia for legal services provided by lawyers with General Counsel level in-house experience combined with the engagement flexibility of an external law firm. You only engage the legal services when you actually need them and thus avoid salary costs and all related employment obligations.

There is a corporate stratum which finds it difficult to afford the high legal fees of external firms and yet those companies also don’t have sufficient volumes of legal work to justify hiring an in-house lawyer. Adroit Lawyers now provides a solution that may help such companies avoid hiring lawyers as a “last resort”.

Our Virtual General Counsel service is a significant development that will enable your company to enjoy the benefits of extensive in-house legal experience on a more affordable and flexible basis.

Experience the benefits of top-level corporate advice when you need it and in the way you need it.

Most large companies have the competitive advantage of being able to engage a team of full-time in-house lawyers who understand its business operations and its legal requirements.

The ready availability of that knowledge and advice can provide a significant strategic advantage when devising business development strategies or seizing growth opportunities. Importantly, it can also help pitfalls be detected and avoided.

Adroit Lawyers offer flexible engagement structures and your business can now have a virtual General Counsel – a lawyer dedicated to helping your business grow.

You can now have all the advantages of having in-house lawyer on your team with the cost benefits of it being a flexible engagement. We offer value-for-money hourly and retainer rates and great savings on ‘day rates’ for longer engagements.

There is another element to this service which is the real ‘value-add’. Many law firms can offer great legal advice and they are well versed in the legal requirements for establishing and operating a business.

We offer an added element – commercial experience where that legal knowledge has been honed by operational reality. It doesn’t change the law, but it does influence the emphasis applied to certain elements.

The strategic application of legal guidelines rather than a broad bush approach would be another way of stating it.

Some executives criticise lawyers for being ’speed humps’ who overly-complicate deals and get in the way. Such criticism is often not fair as the lawyer is riding shotgun on the deal and protecting them from dangers they may not fully grasp.

There is a lesson in there as well though.

Some dangers may ‘never happen’ and while they need to be taken into consideration and addressed from a risk minimisation perspective, the real emphasis should be on the terms that are the heart and soul of the deal. Getting them right and making them ‘bullet proof’ is what really matters.

Structural Change

The 2008 economic crisis has taught us all a lot about the perils that befall an industry if it ceases to faithfully adhere to balanced professional standards and practices.

Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, spoke of “extreme capitalism” and stated that “we’ve seen the triumph of greed over integrity; the triumph of speculation over value creation; the triumph of the short term over long-term sustainable growth”.

Sadly, the legal profession also has cause to pause and consider its direction and structure.

Client Satisfaction

Retired American judge, Justice Macklin Fleming, in his book Lawyers, Money, and Success – The Consequences of Dollar Obsession, argues that the American legal profession’s quest for money caused the profession to lose sight of its true tasks and responsibilities. This has resulted in dissatisfied clients, public mistrust and seriously unhappy lawyers.

Job Satisfaction

Australian lawyers may be faring no better. Radio National’s Law Report recently stated that “surveys of professionals in both the USA and Australia put lawyers at the top of the list when it comes to the incidence of depression. One study, by Beyond Blue and Beaton Consulting, found that 15% of the lawyers surveyed suffer moderate to severe depression.

Our Commitment

At Adroit Lawyers, we’ve taken these lessons to heart. We aim to provide cost-effective service in a manner that increase client happiness and our own job satisfaction – an approach that makes a lot of sense to us.

Our experience shows that the majority of clients require similar basic range of legal services.

Adroit Lawyers can service all your core commercial and corporate requirements and we are continually building the breadth and depth of the services we offer.

We have also not lost sight of your requirement for consistently solid legal advice delivered on time and on budget.

Core Services

Our practice areas include:

• intellectual property
• information technology
• media and entertainment
• capital raising
• mergers and acquisition
• banking
• finance

Referral Services

We also have a trusted network of lawyers available on referral to provide the following services.

• litigation
• property
• environment and planning