Business Disputes | Commercial Litigation Solicitors

Disputes and challenges within a business can be unsettling, but with commercial and proactive advice that’s delivered with your approach to business in mind, Stephensons works with you to reach a swift resolution.

Here commercial litigation specialist and Stephensons Partner Louise Hebborn discusses the level of experience within her team and how they are well placed to assist should a business dispute arise as well as talking about how complications can be avoided.

Commercial litigation solicitor Andrew Whitehead also appears to offer guidance on preparation, funding and at what point legal advice becomes necessary.

The commercial team at Stephensons deliver advice that works for your business. For more information about how the commercial law solicitors at Stephensons can assist please click the link below:

https://www.stephensons.co.uk/site/bu...

Video transcript

Louise Hebborn | Partner, Commercial Law

Here at Stephensons the commercial team have a really wide range of experience and knowledge about business disputes. And certainly during the time that I've been here, I don't think there's anything we haven't actually dealt with. So it can be anything from shareholder disputes, so that's one of the shareholders either wishing to exit the business in a difficult situation, or it can be a contract dispute, and that can be anything in relation to a breach of contract. We also have a lot of experience in dealing with all kinds of property disputes, that can be for property developers who may have bought a site that's subject to a covenant, and there's a wide range of actions which we can advise and identify as and when appropriate.

Businesses who thought in advance can get well drafted terms and conditions that will not necessarily prevent them from having a dispute, but make it much easier to resolve if they do. And it just put them in the best possible position. If it's well drafted it can have a dispute resolution clause, which means again, it's far easier for that business to resolve any dispute which may arise. And also, we do find that businesses with well drafted terms and conditions don't have as many problems of getting paid at the end of their case.

Andrew Whitehead | Commercial Litigation Solicitor

So with the initial stage of any dispute, what I suggest to a client is they need to help themselves right at the start and hopefully they can help themselves this will ultimately end up in minimising cost lots down the line. What the client needs to start doing at the start is they need to think about getting documents together, correspondence together and also it's important to start thinking about preserving evidence right at the start. 'Cause then once they've got all that documentation together, they can come and obviously benefit from taking advice from a solicitor. In the initial stage, we'll complete a review, we'll take instructions. And then once we've taken ... Got a pretty good handle and understanding of what the case is about, we then look to put a strategy in place. So then all the way through that's something for the client to follow up, and we're all aiming towards the same goal.

So sometimes the clients might come to us and find themselves in a bit of a sticky situation and know that they might be found liable, the opposite side has got quite a good case. Because there might be other options open to them because they've come to us early, we might be able to come up with other creative solutions. They might know that they're going to have to settle with the other side, what the amount that they need to settle or the way that settlement looks and how it's framed can change, dependent on how quickly they contact us. So they can come to us and then they can understand what options they've got going forwards.

At Stephensons there's several funding options available. At the initial stage the client might benefit from some private paying advice, just so that everyone understands where they are at the outset. Beyond that we'd always suggest that a client looks at the insurances, 'cause it may be on one of the policies, they've got legal expenses insurance. What that means is their insurer could ultimately pick up the tab for the case, but also, we are on the panel of a number of insurers. So it may be that we are on that same panel and their insurer can actually fund the case with Stephensons. There's also conditional fee agreements and that's something that many people will probably have heard refer to as a no-win-nothing. There's also third party funding available, and that's something that's a growing market and is expanding at the moment. It's really reviewed on a case by case base. It ordinarily applies to higher value, more complex cases. That can be assessed and reviewed with the clients and it could be an option for them going forward...