“Better put a strong fence around the top of the cliff, than an ambulance down in the valley”
Joseph Malins, 1895
Dispute Avoidance
The best outcome of all, financially and practically is to prevent the origination of problems. We want clients to focus on positive value creation whilst we support them to avoid its loss. Consequently our dispute avoidance services are all preventative in character.
Typical Dispute Avoidance services we offer are:
General Counsel Advisory Services
A number of our partner level solicitors have previous experience as in-house counsel to PLCs and private business.
This competence enables them to act as outside senior counsel to business, attending board meetings to catch and discuss legal issues early, and being a senior adviser resource in contract negotiations, including M&A activity and capital raises.
Our approach is based on an early analysis of the risk and reward profile of any given transaction and this informs both drafting and negotiation style. Our General Counsel Advisory Services are offered on either a retained basis or on engagement for specific transactional mandates. They are assisted by solicitors with niche expertise as required.
Risk & Litigation Ready™ Audits
We concentrate on understanding the business and identifying where its value lies, how well that value is protected, and proposing remedial measures. Our risk and litigation ready audits focus on how well a business controls its exposure to litigation risk.
Consultancy Arrangements
We review current contracts to assess risk and compliance with current law.
Merger & Acquisition Risk Profiling
This service integrates legal analysis with the use of targeted intelligence to get under the lid of the target company and those that run it. We agree with clients in advance the focus of the risk profile report making sure client concerns are captured first.
Rep Control™
We assist in the management and control of business and personal reputations, including “sweeping” the internet to clean up content and prepare reputation reports for third party use.
Dispute Resolution
Spring Law represents both Claimants and Defendants in complex and high value disputes. Our approach is strategic and commercial, continually appraising merits and opportunities as the case progresses. Our dispute resolution expertise extends to resolution by mediation, arbitration, expert determination and litigation.
Business Disputes
Our experience in business disputes involves contracts, investments and M&A, insolvency, conspiracy and fraud, shareholder and board disputes, intellectual property, unlawful interference with economic interests and negligence.
Personal Disputes
Our experience in personal disputes involves contracts, defamation, confidentiality and privacy, rights and restrictions, marital breakdown, negligence and land.
Investigations
At Spring Law we undertake investigative work for companies and individuals.
Our work is often concerned with identifying activity trends that indicate fraudulent or malicious activities calculated to inflict harm on a business or personal reputation.
We have a strong network of non-legal professionals who assist as required to complement the core legal and investigatory process.
These investigations are invariably sensitive so we conduct ourselves with the highest degree of confidence and never discuss any issues concerning a mandate without the express consent of our client.
Intelligence
Our focus on investigations and disputes often requires us to understand and exploit available internal and external information to obtain facts that assist in the broad understanding and resolution of client problems. We analyse open source data, internal data, documents, and communications, as well as gather external information via human intelligence sources, combining these information sources into cogent and compelling supporting material. The gathering of intelligence, corporate and personal, is not only relevant to an active investigation where corruption or bribery is suspected or to assimilating information to prove or defend a case. Clients often require us to find information that may assist in understanding a political environment where they are or intend to be active, a challenge to their reputation, or to analyse political and corporate risks associated with emerging markets.
Getting the Best Result
Our approach is driven by good communicators, people clients like to work with and who possess strong written and advocacy skills. Our aim is simple: to get the best result. And that informs our approach to everything: dedicated, pragmatic and intelligent lawyering.