What is Commercial Law?
Commercial law is a set of legal rules of private law that apply to legal relationships arising from legal acts, deeds and transactions considered by law as trade deeds, as well as legal relationships in which traders are involved.
Corporate and commercial lawyers are experts in company and business law. They understand the minute differences between legal entities and how to use them for different purposes. They also assist companies in various transactions stemming business operations.
What do commercial lawyers actually do?
The customers of commercial lawyers are usually corporations or big firms. So an ordinary day would involve, for example, reading and revising contracts, drafting legal documents for businesses, and reviewing mergers in business. It may also require a high level of negotiation on behalf of the client for the terms of a contract or a license agreement. Therefore, the work depends on the field in which you will specialize. However, there are several commercial lawyers who are known as property lawyers; this means that they essentially have only one client and typically look for the legal issues of the organization they work for.
Commercial lawyers are largely confronted with business cases of litigation in the typical form of contractual claims. The role of commercial lawyers is to ask applicants to help their clients through litigation and to help them prepare for what might come from the opposition.
What qualities do commercial lawyers have?
A good commercial lawyer needs to be creative and strategic in order to advise their client on how to effectively structure and negotiate a transaction, and to find innovative ways to solve the unique issues in each transaction. They also need to be excellent project managers, since it is their job to supervise and coordinate all of the multidisciplinary efforts that go into advising a client on a transaction, and be able to distil all of the different advice and clearly communicate it to the client in form and substance so the client can make informed decisions on important issues.
Also, good commercial lawyers are great at managing projects, have a vast understanding of corporate law, they are able to understand the details and the bigger picture, exercise great judgment, communicate effectively with the client to ensure everyone is on the same page, understand the goals of the client, and are responsive.
What makes an excellent commercial lawyer?
To thrive in corporate law, you will need to develop exemplary knowledge of business law, current trends and legislative and regulatory developments.
Furthermore, you will need to build up a familiarity with corporate and business law in other countries where your clients have operations or are looking to invest.
A corporate lawyer needs to have a strong communication and negotiation skills, an excellent academic background, the ability to think ‘out-of-the-box’, exceptional analytical skills and meticulous attention to detail.
Teamwork is an essential feature of most corporate transactions. You will work with groups of professionals who share a common objective and therefore your interpersonal and people management skills should be top-notch. A good corporate lawyer is ambitious, thrives on challenges and relentlessly chases their goals.
The objectives of a corporate lawyer
The goal of a corporate lawyer is to help his clients in a number of ways: by creating legal options and by providing guidance in decision-making in a commercial context. Corporate lawyers help corporate, industrial and commercial clients to manage their internal processes, by providing legal advice on contracts that relate to corporate organization, buying and selling companies, preparing and developing commercial contracts, managing and helping to resolve commercial conflicts and technological license deals.
