Strategic legal counsel is critical to the success of any startup. Some sectors are governed by complex laws and careful planning is integral to an organization’s success for years to come. At Marwah Law, we help businesses navigate complex legislative schemes and craft long term strategies by leveraging over 8 years of business law experience.

Starting a new organization generally involves three main steps:

• Forming an entity under federal or provincial laws
• Obtaining the proper licenses and permits
• Preparing the organizing documents

Here’s just a short list of the services we provide to facilitate the start-up process for any organization:

• Reserve names
• Draft and file formation documents (the Articles of Incorporation, also known as a Certificate of Incorporation)
• Prepare and file registrations to do business in other jurisdictions
• Obtain permits and licenses
• Advise founders on selecting board of directors and determining structural issues
• Draft bylaws
• Draft the organizational meeting minutes for the first meeting of the board of directors and/or shareholders
• Prepare governing documents, including ledgers, registers and share certificates

On-call counsel makes businesses healthier, more stable and better able to stay mission focused. Businesses deserve legal advice they can call on. Whether they are considering new opportunities, navigating difficult dynamics or need help understanding and negotiating contract terms, businesses benefit most from having counsel who understand their business, their budgets and the specific issues they encounter.

Most businesses do not look for outside counsel unless they feel they have to. Many relationships with counsel begin with organizations asking for assistance to fix a specific problem or consider a proposed transaction. Healthier businesses proactively screen for legal issues and invite periodic compliance checks, establishing relationships with counsel so that reliable advice is easily accessible when needed.

Here’s just a short list of the general counsel services we provide for businesses:

• Counsel on call for day-to-day and emergency matters
• Legal health screenings and compliance checks
• Mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, reorganizations, restructuring and repositioning
• Advice on structuring joint ventures and other collaborative relationships
• Reviewing contracts to help businesses negotiate for better terms and to understand “industry standard” arrangements
• Strategically planning and prioritizing legal concerns
• Mapping of organizational infrastructure
• Designing systems for compliance
• HR matters (facilitating affordable review of employee handbooks, contracts and offer letters, employee benefit compliance, etc.)
• Advice when considering new vendor relationships
• Advice on unrelated business activities
• Advice on handling governance, conflict of interest, and fiduciary matters
• Guidance through Founder transitions
• Bylaws review and revision

Our experience and know-how allow us to deal with all manner of commercial transactions and agreements both routine and complex. Because we are not narrowly focused on any particular segment of industry, we encounter and work through challenges on ‘both sides’ of a project.

We advise on transactions including acquisitions, privatizations, joint ventures and strategic investments across various sectors and provide unique expertise in a wide range of corporate governance matters. A combination of legal expertise and profound understanding of industry-specific challenges ensures seamless and timely execution of each and every transaction, regardless of its complexity. This insight enables us to confidently guide our clients on a wide range of transactions such as:

• Legal and structuring advice
• Leasing of private and commercial lands
• Management of PPSA obligations and responsibilities
• Corporate structures

We draft, negotiate and review a wide range of contractual agreements, including:

• Maintenance and service agreements
• Memorandum of understanding
• Confidentiality agreements
• Consultancy agreements
• Licence agreements, including SLAs and SaaS
• Distribution agreements
• Shareholder, partnership and joint venture agreements
• Loan agreements, guarantees and securities