Donaldson Trumble is uniquely placed, as a “large-small” firm to offer the business community a level of knowledge and expertise normally associated with much larger “big name” firms, but at a price that all businesses can afford.
Unlike larger firms, where the practitioners specialize and large teams of lawyers are required to deal with the diverse range of legal issues arising in most commercial transactions, the firm’s commercial practitioners aim to be general commercial practitioners with a broad knowledge of the range of commercial and legal issues confronting businesses.
Lead by Patrick Sweeney, an accredited business law specialist, our commercial lawyers aim to help you negotiate the range of regulatory, contractual and commercial issues confronting business owners and senior managers. Our professional but commercial approach means that we take responsibility for managing your legal risks, without unnecessarily impeding the running and progress of your business. Where possible, we will also try to be proactive in advising and assisting you, such as through the provision of referrals to appropriate experts or suggesting strategies to improve or protect the value of your business.
Areas in which we frequently advise our commercial clients:
- Sales and acquisitions of businesses or shares in businesses, including due diligence, restraints of trade, mergers and demergers, partnerships and partnership dissolutions, joint ventures, unit trusts.
- Corporate governance advice.
- Company secretarial services.
- Commercial agreements including shareholder or unitholder agreements, non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements, licence agreements, distribution agreements.
- Franchising documentation and advice (both for franchisors and franchisees).
- Intellectual property advice in the areas of trademarks (the firm has a registered trademark attorney), copyright, designs, confidential information, trade secrets, domain names, patents.
- Capital raisings, including Initial Public Offerings and private equity.
- E-business or online documentation, including licence agreements, software and website development agreements, Software as a Service (SaaS) agreements, “click-wrap” agreements, end user agreements, website maintenance agreements.
- Trade Practices Act, including anti-competitive conduct.
- Employment and workplace relations law.
- Insolvency, corporate reconstruction and turnaround.