Wills, Estate Planning and Probate

They say there’s nothing certain in life except death and taxes. This is why legal advice on estate planning and using a lawyer to create your will is so important. Making arrangements for the ongoing care of your loved ones and your assets in the event of death or incapacity is not something you want to leave to chance.

Our team of legal experts, in collaboration with your financial advisor, can build an integrated estate planning strategy to ensure your wishes are carried out. We will also identify issues you may not have thought about including how to pass on your wealth in a protected and tax effective way.

Through our experience in wills and estate law, we can also help with more complex estate planning including setting up the appropriate ownership structure for your assets, examining the taxation position of family members and developing a succession plan for ownership of family businesses and related entities.

SMSFs and LRBAs

With widely recognised SMSF expertise, Partners Legal Solutions assists trustees and their advisors with all aspects of SMSF establishment, operation and compliance and provides strategic and legal advice on related taxation and succession planning issues.

Limited Recourse Borrowing Arrangements

With an increasing number of assets being purchased through an SMSF, it is important to understand the restrictions and rules governing LRBAs in light of rapidly changing superannuation laws.

We can ensure you are compliant and meet legal requirements by managing all documentation needed to set up the LRBA and can work with other Partners Wealth Group specialists on borrowing arrangements and property transfer/leasing requirements to ensure all SMSF benefits are preserved. This integrated approach to structuring and setting up your LRBA means you are in safe hands.

Property and Developments

Our team has broad transactional real property experience and can offer you a comprehensive range of residential and commercial property legal services including off-the-plan transactions, leasing, transactions involving trusts and SMSFs, stamp duty and tax advice, property development and aged care. By understanding how your property transaction fits into your broader wealth management strategy or business goals, and acting as your commercial property lawyers, we work with your financier and other advisors to ensure your property transaction, finance and structuring advice fit together.

Corporate Law

We have extensive expertise and experience in providing prompt, calculated and practical advice across a range of Corporate Law situations including:

• engineering innovative solutions involving merger and acquisition activity for listed or privately held organisations or assets;
• making or receiving private equity injections on a small or large scale;
• strategic competition and regulatory advice;
• high and/or low-level review and assistance with issues of corporate governance and compliance;
• fundraising via the many options now provided by sophisticated capital markets; or
• just helping a new business establish itself legally, and sharing the journey thereafter, including developing business succession strategies.

Insolvency and Reconstruction

Dovetailing nicely into our corporate practice is the experience of our lawyers in working with banks and borrowers (though not simultaneously!) when it comes to commercial reconstructions and workouts, all forms of insolvency administration and securities enforcement. We have led legal teams charged with swiftly assessing a situation, composing, negotiating and then implementing the selected strategy, while always ensuring that the interests of key stakeholders are recognised and, where possible, met. Often advising across multiple jurisdictions on a time-critical basis, we are experienced in the legal landscape that surrounds these often complex situations.

Almost as importantly, we maintain a focus on securing the optimum commercial result regardless of tense multiparty negotiations and any administrations that may follow.

Litigation

In certain personal or business related circumstances, litigation is occasionally necessary. However, before that point is reached it’s always best to seek to resolve a dispute amicably before the costs and delays associated with court action complicate things.

Dispute resolution is almost as much about tactics as it is about knowing the law. That’s where the saying that “money can’t buy experience” rings true. Having been involved in countless pieces of substantial litigation, and even more smaller ones, Partners legal Solutions has the combined ability and aptitude to advise on any launched or defended commercial proceedings throughout Australia.

We even have an innovative arrangement with barristers designed to avoid the double-handling that makes the cost of litigation so prohibitive. This is just one more way that we deliver value to our clients that lawyers using a traditional approach cannot provide.

Your values

Tell us about your:

• desire to deliver clients’ needs in the most efficient way you can
• desire to work flexibly in terms of location and hours
• ability to adopt great technology to enable the efficient delivery of solutions
• wish to be appropriately remunerated for the value you deliver to your clients

Your lifestyle

Which lawyers benefit from our model?

• Lawyers looking for flexible hours such as those approaching retirement or those with family commitments
• Lawyers who have a keen sense of delivering value to clients in excess of the cost
• Lawyers who have clients looking for flexible charging arrangements
• Lawyers who don’t need large teams of legal and administrative staff to deliver their services

How does it work?

When you join Partners Legal Solutions you are not committing to come into an office for a certain number of hours (or any hours at all). Our cloud technology enables you to work from home, at a client’s premises, on a plane or anywhere at all. We ask you to commit to particular projects (as many or as few as you like) but, beyond that, you choose when and where you want to work.

Revenue Model

We can enter into any arrangements with our clients that make sense... retainers, hourly rates, fixed fees, success fees and even equity-style arrangements. We prefer to avoid hourly rates if possible because they mean that the interests of the lawyer and the client are diametrically opposed.

We don’t argue with clients about fees. In the unlikely event that a client does not think that we have delivered value, we will reduce or eliminate our fee accordingly. (We will however reserve the right not to act for that client the next time they ask).

Remuneration Model

The firm shares remuneration with each lawyer on a pro-rata basis when fees are paid. The split between the firm and the lawyer may vary slightly from matter to matter depending on the type of retainer but, as a general guide, the lawyer receives as gross remuneration of 45% of the fees attributable to his or her work plus 15% of all fees collected on matters for which the lawyer made the initial referral to the firm. Thus, if you source a matter and do all the work on it, you will receive 60% of the fees collected. Contrast this with traditional city firms where partners may earn profit of around one-third of fees billed and it is obvious that we deliver a better outcome for both clients and lawyers.

Partners Legal Solutions Pty Ltd (ABN 52 655 454 014) is affiliated with Partners Wealth Group. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.