Over the years Cruickshanks has helped clients establishing new businesses as well as expanding their existing ones. We are experienced in civil litigation (international and UK), dispute resolution, UK and offshore company incorporation, commercial contracts and their negotiation, employment, due diligence, corporate governance, and commercial property.
Sale and Purchase of Businesses
Each business is unique and requires their own contract terms and conditions for conducting their business. We will help you draft and approve Sale and Purchase Agreements, negotiate on terms and advise you throughout the whole process. We have experience in cross border acquisitions including equity and asset purchases.
Commercial Agreements
Many business owners overlook the importance of having a formal contract or taking timely legal advice on their day to day business contracts. We are experienced in advising and drafting standard terms and conditions of various contracts, such as distribution agreements, agency, loan, shareholders’, option and IP agreements.
Legal Opinion
We provide legal opinions to many overseas companies. The purpose of having a legal opinion is two-fold; for you to find out the legal effect of a transaction or matter; and to identify legal risks that you should consider and further evaluate such as whenever your company is to belisted on any stock markets. We have worked with manytop international law firms for overseas companies to provide our opinions under the English law. In the past years we have accumulated a wealth of experience in dealing with difficult issues and overcomingthe differences in culture and legal systems to satisfy the needs of our clients.
Intellectual Property (Trademarks and Patents)
Goodwill is a valuable asset of any business and vitally important to your business development. A registered trade mark is an easy way to protect your trading name and business and thus your goodwill. We have registered numerous trade marks for our clients to protect their intellectual property rights in their goods and services. We also advise international clients in protecting their global intellectual rights.
Employment
Owners of many small businesses are often not aware that it is their legal responsibility to issue employment contracts to all of their employees. We can advise and help you by drafting employment contracts, as well as disciplinary and grievance procedures which you are required by law to have. We are experienced in dealing with settlement agreements, compromise agreements, employment tribunal issues and redundancy procedures.
Solicitors price their fees according to a time honoured method of an hourly charge out rate for each fee earner dealing with the matter. An hourly rate is calculated by taking the costs of running a practice in the location where it is situated, adding a profit that is subjectively assessed by the owners of the practice to reflect a reasonable reward for its staff in terms of salaries commensurate with each employee’s and owner’s experience and expertise. This is used often as a basis for setting a fixed fee as being an as accurate estimate of the time incurred to complete the transaction based on experience of a similar transaction of similar value.
Depending on your requirements we would provide general legal advice on an ad hoc basis as and when you require or provide our services for your particular transaction in any of the following areas.
Our fees will mainly be time based and our hourly rates ranging from £450 per hour for a senior partner to £90 per hour for a paralegal. We could provide you a fee quote for a particular service you need which will be calculated on the basis of the time required on similar transactions and the complexity of the transaction without complications.
Normally we will bill monthly, unless an arrangement is made to the contrary in writing, and, we would expect a quarterly retainer to cover the anticipated fees for each quarter in advance. In accordance with normal business practice we require our bills to be paid within 30 days of sending. If they are not paid within 30 days we charge interest at the judgment rate of interest prevailing from time to time. This currently is 8%.
