#112 What does a Business Lawyer actually do?
Do you ever wonder what the phrase business lawyer actually means? Today I shed a light on what a business lawyer does, the approach I take as a business lawyer and the things I don’t do.
Firstly, I explain how a business lawyer differs from other lawyers. The areas of law are not dissimilar to medical specialities - there are different kinds of lawyers for different areas of law. If you’re buying or selling a property, you need a conveyancing lawyer, if you've injured yourself, you need a personal injury lawyer, or if you've been charged with a criminal offence, you need a criminal lawyer. And, if you are running a small business, you need a business lawyer.
As a small business owner, you've got so much on your plate already - you're wearing all the hats and you need someone to support you on that. You need somebody to be there with you every step of the way. A business lawyer is your sounding board, your peace of mind and your advisor. They will advise you on what you need to do, what you need to know, how to do it and how to comply with your legal obligations.
I run through examples of what can come up for small businesses and the role that a business lawyer plays in helping to resolve those pain points. I also explain my approach to setting businesses up with preventative steps to ensure they avoid situations where they need to call a litigation or dispute resolution lawyer.
I am a small business lawyer who focuses on teaching you everything you need to know, supporting you to do it all and setting you up for long-term success so that your business can grow and scale in a sustainable way without coming unstuck later.
In this episode I explain:
How a business lawyer is different from other lawyers
How a business lawyer assists with the common conundrums and tricky situations small businesses face
The role of a business lawyer in helping small businesses get the foundations right for long-term success
Why I take a preventative, risk-mitigation approach
How I work with small businesses utilising a high-touch, collaborative approach
What to consider when choosing a business lawyer
If you’ve ever been unsure of your legal obligations and don’t know how you might go about setting your business up for long-term success, this episode is for you.
Full Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. Thank you for joining me again. Do you ever wonder, when you hear the phrase business lawyer, what does that actually mean? So what do you actually do, Tracy? A few clients have asked me this recently, so they're clients now, but they reached out because they weren't clients then.
[00:00:42] And they've said, well, what does a business lawyer actually do? I need this, can you help me? And I guess it's hard when you are in the thick of it all the time. I just assume it's common knowledge that everyone knows what I do. And everyone knows why I do it. So I wanted to record this episode to shed a light on what your typical business lawyer does, what I do, and share with you what I don't do and why.
[00:01:06] So to start with something that does come up in my inbox and my DMs is Tracy, are you a commercial lawyer? Yes. I. I do commercial things- contracts, agreements, providing advice, commercial leasing, sale of business, all of that would fall under the traditional lawyer's definition of a commercial lawyer. And the phrase or the title business lawyer, in my experience, has really come around in probably the last decade more so before that, it was your commercial lawyer, your civil litigation lawyer, your criminal lawyer, your wills and estates and probate lawyer and the term business lawyer wasn't something earlier in my career that was used a lot. That's been reframed though, because I think when you say commercial lawyer, what does that mean to you? Lots of people would scratch their head and a commercial lawyer can be a hybrid of many things, including some business law.
[00:02:07] So the term business lawyer is better suited to lawyers who specialise in acting for businesses. I go a step further and specialise in acting for and supporting small business owners. So you won't see me acting in a multimillion dollar merger and acquisition for larger corporations.
[00:02:28] You won't see me advising on self-managed super funds. That is not nicheing into the support that small businesses need. Okay, so there's specialists for that, but that's not what I view the small business lawyer really doing. It can be vast, it can be varied still. So for example, if you think about your GP and you go down to your local GP and you go in and you see your GP for, hormone issues, child issues, pregnancy issues, skin issues.
[00:03:01] Horses for courses, isn't it? Some GPs specialise and have niche areas and some things, others in other things, but they're all GPs. But if you need a specialist for something, you'll go to a brain surgeon, for example, or you'll go to a pediatrician or you'll go to your obstetrician because they are specialists in certain areas.
[00:03:22] Lawyers are not dissimilar to that. So for your lawyers, if you need wills done, you go to a wills and estates lawyer. You don't come to me. If you need conveyencing done because you're buying or selling a property, or you've injured yourself and you need a personal injury lawyer, or you've been charged with a criminal offense, you need a criminal lawyer. If you are running a small business, you need a business lawyer. And when I say business lawyer, for you to support your need, you then need to decide much like a GP, which one suits your needs. So are you an e-commerce business and you want to just buy and sell and create new businesses and continue to sell?
[00:04:02] You need a business lawyer who's going specialise in buying and selling businesses. If that's all you want to do. If though you are like the majority of my clients and you run a small business and you don't know all the things you need to know because hey, you're a small business owner, you've got so much on your plate already, you're wearing all the hats, but you need someone to support you on that. You need somebody to be there with you every step of the way when you need them. What do I need to do? What do I need to know? here? This issue has come up, this pain points come up, how do I deal with it? And be your sounding board, be your peace of mind, be your advisor. That's your business lawyer. Drafting new contracts, advising you on the Australian Consumer Law - so important for small businesses. You've got obligations under the Australian consumer law, so you need someone who knows it inside out. That's your business lawyer.
[00:04:57] Somebody who can help you out of a pickle because a client has taken issue and wants a refund. A client's taken issue and has alleged that you haven't delivered what you said you would, that's your business lawyer. That's the sort of lawyer that you. In my view, when you're running your small business.
[00:05:12] So looping back to the question that I started with, which is what does a business lawyer do? A business lawyer will advise you on what you need to do, what you need to know, and how to do it, how to comply with your legal obligations. For example, the Australian Consumer Law, how to be set up so that you're legally protected, how to meet or discharge your obligations that you have to your consumers, clients, customers, how to set yourself up for growth, sustainability, how to navigate tricky situations when they arise with clients, with suppliers, with team.
[00:05:52] How to take your business to the next level, how to deal with or respond to a claim that you might have been served with, legal proceedings, that you might have been served with a debt claim that you might have been served with. Those are all the things that your business lawyers should be able to do for you.
[00:06:08] But like I said, much like choosing your GP, you're going to gravitate to some lawyers over others, depending on your niche, depending on your area. The example I gave around e-commerce businesses that want to buy and sell. If you are an online business and you're looking to scale and you want to set up new offerings like masterminds and group programs, you need somebody who's going to be all over your risks, the pain points, the legal obligations to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success with all of those new offerings.
[00:06:42] If you're a consultant going out on your own for the first time, after corporate, what do you need to have in place by way of agreements? How do you issue those agreements to your clients? If you're a designer, interior designer, or stylist, you need to know how it is you attach your terms and conditions to your beautiful proposals that you send to your clients, and how do you get paid and for all of those businesses, what do you do if you haven't been paid?
[00:07:05] All of those things, all of those conundrums and all of those tricky situations are something that your business lawyer will be able to help you with. For me, I have very much a targeted focus on preventative steps to take to avoid businesses ending up in situations where they need to call a litigation or dispute resolution lawyer.
[00:07:26] If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'll know that's part of my why. You know, that I spent the first 12 years of my career acting for people in litigation and dispute resolution, court mediation, all the things. And so when it comes to what can go wrong for a business, there's nothing, nothing that I haven't seen.
[00:07:46] So I have taken everything that I saw and everything that I learned and everything that I did over those earlier years in my career. And I have used that as a driving force in this business to position myself to be able to help small businesses set themselves up to avoid being in that situation.
[00:08:04] And that's why I do what I do. So I am the small business lawyer who wants to focus on teaching you everything you need to know, supporting you to do it all, to set you up for long-term success with your clients so that your business can grow and scale in a sustainable way without coming unstuck later because something's gone wrong without feeling like you're sitting on a house of cars and you're waiting for it to crumble.
[00:08:29] Because you've bootstrapped it the whole way along and you don't know where the weaknesses are. We want to stay as far away from that as we can. So in my business, I support small business owners who are like-minded and who are keen to avoid those pitfalls, to avoid that chaos and to build their business for long-term sustainable success.
[00:08:51] Then you get into how business lawyers work. I am not the business lawyer for everyone. There are many touch points when working with me. It's a collaboration between me and my clients with everything that we do from developing documents to giving advice, to making business strategy decisions, to navigating our way through tricky situations, to putting a strategy in place for growth.
[00:09:13] It's all collaborative. So I'm the lawyer that likes to talk to you. I pick up the phone, I answer the phone. There's a lot of high touch points with me because the communication in my view is critical in order for that relationship to do everything that it should do to benefit your business. some clients don't want to talk to their lawyer that much.
[00:09:36] They don't want emails from their lawyer that often, and that's okay. It's not for everybody. There are some business lawyers out there who will sell you a template, wish you well, and move on to their next client. That's okay, because that will suit some businesses. I've recorded episodes in the past about my view about selling templates.
[00:09:59] Why I think that lawyers who do that are actually doing a business a disservice and doing their clients a disservice. I've shared that in earlier podcast episodes, so if you haven't listened, go back and take a listen. I'm very clear on my view about what I think about that.
[00:10:13] I think it's high risk and I don't think it's client centric, so I don't do it. And that's okay. Others do and that's okay.
[00:10:20]
[00:10:20] So like the GP example, horses for courses. Same deal with the business lawyers, horses for courses. It's not one size fits all. You need to find one that you vibe with, one that you share values with, and one that you're really comfortable working with.
[00:10:37] That's what I wanted to share with you today on this episode, to shed some light on what a business lawyer actually does, because now that you've listened to this episode, hopefully you've got some clarity around what it is that the different business lawyers do, how they do it and what's gonna work best for you.
[00:10:54] My best advice when you're deciding who to work with, whether it's a GP or a lawyer, or an accountant or a bookkeeper, is to reach out and have a conversation. And much like relationships, if it's not the right fit, and if it doesn't feel right, move on and find one where you do gel. Find one that does feel right.
[00:11:12] Thanks so much for listening. Now if I could ask you a small favor, if you have a business buddy or a colleague or somebody you think might benefit from listening to this episode because they don't have a business lawyer yet, and it's probably time that they did, I would be so grateful if you would share this episode, either by sharing the link or taking a screenshot, however you like to share, because that will help me on my mission to get this podcast into the ears of more business owners. As always, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate your time and I'll catch you next time.
LINKS:
Previous episode mentioned:
Ep 105 - Does The Australian Consumer Law Apply To My Business?
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