News & Views

There is certainly no shortage of legal advice in the world - most of it completely free and much of it, no doubt, technically correct. A Google search for ‘legal advice’, for example, produces over two billion results.

A question that sellers often ask corporate lawyers when they are about to start selling their business is how to share information about the business as part of buyer’s due diligence process i.e. the process by which a buyer seeks to understand the business with a view to identifying risks and verifying the price offered for it.

Having made a strategic decision to convert your business to a limited company - whether from being a sole trader or a traditional partnership - there are some potential bear traps to avoid when doing so. Here is our guide to some of the main ones and what you can do to avoid them.

Sport England has recently reaffirmed the common principles shared by organisations that demonstrate good governance. These common principles are structure, people, communication, standards & conduct, and policies & processes. In this article we focus on the first, and arguably the most important, of these common principles, namely structure.

Almost every day another company becomes B Corp certified, reflecting their exacting standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. B Corp companies are verified by B Lab UK, a not-for-profit network transforming the global economy to benefit people, communities and the planet, enabling people to use businesses as a force for good.

The outsourcing of marketing activity has become a common feature of many law firms that handle claims-related work - a tacit acceptance perhaps that attracting clients requires specialist skills which some lawyers simply do not have.

More than three quarters of the law firm leaders responding to the O’Connors’ Law Firm Leaders Survey said their most pressing business concern was recruiting staff, with over a third saying they were having difficulties retaining staff. Notwithstanding these challenges, more than half said they are planning to increase their headcount and only a tenth planning to reduce it.

Shortly before The Queen’s Coronation in 1953, Liverpool-born singer Lita Roza topped the hit parade with the much-loved pop classic ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?’ The track was nudged out of the Coronation Order of Service by Zadok the Priest, but rumour has it the Archbishop of Canterbury was humming it throughout rehearsals.

Nelson Mandela said that money won’t create success but the freedom to make it will. Perhaps this explains why more and more companies are using employee share schemes as a means of incentivising staff - aligning the interests of employees and shareholders whilst providing tax-efficient rewards.

American actor and comedian Jonathan Katz once said that he hated going to funerals because he was not a mourning person. Well at least he had a funeral plan.