Commercial disputes
We will take a business conflict from the first day through to a decision and a plan for collecting on it: what it is worth, what can be proved, and where it can end early.
When you need help with a dispute
A contract was terminated on you
A notice arrived ending an agreement you had built around. Whether it was validly given decides what you can recover and how long you have to act.
Your co-founder wants out
A shareholder or a director is leaving and disagrees about what they take. The company keeps trading while this runs, and decisions in it still have to be made.
A distributor went around the agreement
Your goods are being sold outside the territory or the channel you agreed. Every month this continues makes the loss harder to separate from ordinary trading.
The other side started proceedings
You are the respondent, and someone else set the timetable. The first deadline is already running and it is not moved by the fact that you disagree.
Money is owed and assets are moving
The debt is not disputed, but the company that owes it is being emptied. While that runs, protective steps come before the merits of the claim.
A deal collapsed after you performed
You delivered, the other side walked away, and the contract is thinner than the promises around it. What those promises are worth is the first thing we will test.
What we do in a commercial dispute
A dispute is a business decision before it is a legal one. The question is not only whether you are right: it is what being right is worth, how long it takes to prove and whether there is anything at the end to collect.
We will answer those three before recommending a step, and you will see the numbers the decision rests on.
What you get
- An honest value for the matter
- The record built early
- A chosen next step
- Costs mapped before they are spent
- A plan for collecting
Disputes we take on
- Contract, supply and services: non-payment, termination, defective or late performance.
- Shareholder and director conflicts, including exits and deadlock inside a company.
- Distribution and agency: territory, exclusivity, and what happens when it ends.
- Technology and licensing: scope of a licence, acceptance of work, and support obligations.
What we weigh before recommending steps
- The size of the claim against what it costs to prove it: some matters do not repay their own process.
- Whether money is the point at all — stopping an action, restoring access, finishing a delivery or agreeing an exit are outcomes too.
- Whether the other side can still pay by the time it ends, which can change while the matter runs.
- What the commercial relationship is worth, in the cases where winning would end it.
How the work is split
- Writing the demand or the answer to one is a claim or a response.
- Choosing the forum and the terms you will be bound by is dispute resolution strategy.
- Once a hearing is listed, appearing at it is court representation.
- This page is the matter itself: what it is worth, how it is run, and how it ends.
Sources: serving documents on a company abroad runs through the Convention of 15 November 1965 on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters, which has 84 contracting parties and works only between them. Time limits and the court that hears the claim are set by the contract and the country.
Stages of work
The first days decide your options.
We will preserve the record before anyone tidies it, stop communications that make admissions, and find the dates that are already running against you.
Originals and their metadata stay untouched, nothing is written after the fact, and the team is told not to delete messages or files.
What the matter is worth.
We will value it before you spend anything: what can be proved, what proving it costs, and whether there is a company at the end that can pay.
Where a fact matters and cannot be shown from a document or a witness, we will mark it as a gap and value the matter without it.
The step we choose, and its budget.
Every route is costed by phase before it starts, and an estimate is not a cap unless the engagement says so in writing. Where the other side is abroad, serving documents on it is a separate line in that budget, in money and in time.
If the other side moved first, the timetable is theirs. If you still need them as a supplier or a customer, the remedy is chosen to keep that working.
How it ends: agreement or decision.
A settlement is the ending both sides choose, and it holds only if it is written to be performed: who does what by when, what happens if that slips, and which obligations outlive the document.
Where a third party decides instead, the case becomes what the file says it is, so we will tell you what the file supports while there is still time to change it.
Where the money actually comes from.
Getting a decision and getting paid are separate jobs, and the second one turns on which company actually holds something.
Enforcing in another country runs by that country’s own procedure, and we will not present our view as if it settled foreign law.
What changes after it ends.
A dispute points at the clause, the approval or the record-keeping that let it happen, and the closing note separates what is finished from what still runs.
What else we do on disputes is in the Dispute Resolution area.
FAQ
Discuss
the Task
Speak to our team
Speak to our team. Tell us about your task –
we’ll help you with it in any jurisdiction.