When you think about all the legalities, nuances, different jurisdictions, hundreds of different laws, and applications for them, it makes you wonder how can a lawyer possibly know all of that? And truth is, they probably do not. In reality, there are several different ramifications that a lawyer can specialize in, so they can best defend you, your rights, and your interests.
This is not in any way a bad thing, as it is not possible nor fair to ask lawyers to know literally everything their field can offer. Just like how we have different kinds of specialization for engineers—mechanical, electrical, and structural for example—lawyers will also normally have a handful of areas where they have more experience, expertise, and a network to support their cases.
One of the most common areas for lawyers to set up their practice is corporate law. There are hundreds of thousands of companies around Canada, and each of them is going to need a lawyer (or a team of lawyers) to take care of their regulations, paperwork and litigations.
Dealing with big corporations can be really stressful as you are taking care, sometimes, of multi-million-dollar companies and any mistake can be very costly, but even for smaller businesses, having help from people who went through years and years of studies and practice is essential. For this area, we have corporate lawyers calgary.
What do Corporate Lawyers do?
A corporate lawyer will normally work in a law firm, which then will provide their services to a company. A corporate lawyer can work both with corporate practice and with litigation, and this difference is important.
A litigator will go to Court if needed, and their job is much more focused on law research and writing cases, most of the time unique to the specific situation they are dealing with.
The corporate practice involves less arguing the law, and more “office work” so to say. There are different areas associated with this work such as merging and/or acquisition, real estate, corporate finance, banking, and others. Legal practices have rules to follow too, for example, when closing a deal between companies for an acquisition the corporate lawyer will need to ensure all documents are in order and where they are coming from so the acquisition can happen with all documents signed, like a checklist.
Corporate lawyers also do a lot of due diligence, which means they ensure everything is in order so action can be taken. Still, in the acquisition example, a corporate lawyer will conduct due diligence by researching the company being purchased from public records to requesting reports from them to ensure that the company they work for is not acquiring something that will give them headaches later on.
Drafting documents is another job of a corporate lawyer. They might be asked to draft documents that may be used publicly or inside the company, and that means that corporate lawyers also deal with contracts.
What Are Contracts and How Do They Work?
A contract is a legally binding document with a set of promises and actions to be taken that two consenting parties—such as two companies—are going to take that affect them. Contract law is for the most part governed by the common law of the province and is recognized as a legal obligation, and corporate law is governed by The Canadian Business Corporations Act in Canada and the Business Corporations Act in Alberta.
As a legal obligation, it also means that any breach of a contract brings damages to the infringing party, and they may need to pay those damages to the aggrieved party. This makes the corporate lawyer’s job extremely important to ensure that every contract is within the company they work for best interests and that there are not any problems associated with it that might come back to bite them in the future.
That is where most of the due diligence work comes in place as well, corporate lawyers will need to review contracts both drafted by their own firm to make sure everything is in order, but also from third parties and other companies where the company they work for might do business with to ensure their best interests are protected and taken care of.
Overall, a corporate lawyer’s job involves a lot of drafting, proofreading, and handling contracts to ensure that the company they are representing is protected. Without those trained professionals, contracts could be drafted in a way that someone could take advantage of the other.
With that in mind, because corporate law is so complex and has high risks if done poorly or by untrained professionals, it is highly recommended that you have a corporate lawyer in Calgary with you throughout any process that involves your company. Regardless of if your company is small or big, you will always want to be protected and have someone ready to defend you.