FAQ

Can we have your terms of engagement?

How many lawyers do you have?

See here for details of our lawyers. We are also able to contract additional senior lawyers on a project by project basis.

Do you have enough resources for my transaction?

We can comfortably complete transactions up to the upper end of the mid-market M&A spectrum (circa NZ$100m), where necessary enlisting specialist advisers or a large firm to provide specialist advice (for example on competition, employment and enviromental law).

We think a better result is usually achieved by a small team of lawyers working hard and cohesively right across a project or deal than a large team of lawyers working on smaller chunks of the project. For example, at their previous firm, Andrew Simmonds, Victoria Stewart and two other lawyers completed substantially all of the work for Trade Me on the sale of the company to Fairfax, from start to finish.

How much do you charge?

That depends on the type of work and the value we are able to add.

For high value/mission critical project work, our rates are comparable to mid-tier law firms such as Minter Elison and Buddle Findlay.

For business as usual clients, our standard hourly rates are more comparable with firms in the next tier down.

For our "pre-investment, pre-revenue" start up clients we are happy to negotiate a lower fee basis for an initial period to assist them to get good advice from the outset.

Are you taking on more early stage companies?

We have quite a large number of early stage clients, but we are always interested in talking to new early stage companies to see if we can add value and at the same time develop a long term commercial relationship.

If you are interested in our approach to advising early stage companies, see our commercial foundations paper which we present to early stage companies for the NZTE Escalator team.

Will you work for shares?

We will consider share proposals... but we usually encourage our start up clients to avoid sweat equity deals wth service providers as there are valuation and performance measurement difficulties, adverse tax consequences and potential securities law issues.

In the longer term, having a range of former suppliers on the share register is at best a nuisance and at worst can give rise to material commercial and legal difficulties. For example, we have helped a number of companies through the difficult and expensive process of buying out former suppliers from their shareholdings as a requirement of a VC funding round.

Subject to those caveats, we are most likely to consider a share deal as part of a larger investment round, as valuations, structuring and documentation (eg shareholders' agreements etc) will be dealt with as part of the wider deal.