Broadly speaking, we build better legal frameworks for our clients and help our clients make better decisions about their legal relationships, the Web and digital media.
That is a pretty broad overview of what we do. We find it helpful to use a few analogies to explain our work in simple terms. You can think of us almost as architects and builders or even as software developers in a legal sense.
We use our knowledge and expertise in a number of areas of the law to build legal frameworks that our clients need to conduct their business and achieve their objectives every day. These frameworks are a little like building, we don't just give you a few fittings and some paint, we develop the legal equivalent of the foundations, the walls, doors, finishings and that great artwork you have over your receptionist's desk.
In practical legal terms these frameworks are your agreements with your service providers, your customers and your trading partners. They include lease agreements, service level agreements, advertising and sponsorship agreements and more. When it comes to the Web and digital media, these frameworks take the form of website terms of use, privacy policies and content licenses. These are the essential tools you need to conduct various aspects of your business in a legal environment that reduces your exposure to risk as much as possible. It is important not to underestimate your legal requirements and take shortcuts. Our emphasis is on producing agreements and documents that work as they are intended to, over producing quick and inadequate "1 pagers". After all, when you build your house, you want a solid foundation, all 4 walls and a roof over your head. The same principle applies to legal frameworks like agreements and policy documents.
These frameworks' complexity is really dependent on your requirements. You may need something fairly simple or you may need to develop a fairly complicated legal structure to accommodate a complex business relationship. We can help you do what you need to do by building that framework for you.
Legally speaking
We are a niche new media law firm and provides services tailored for the Web and digital media as well as a range of commercial legal services. The legal frameworks we create include the following:
- Content licensing both online and offline (this includes both open content licenses and custom licenses)
- Protection of personal information and respect for privacy online
- Anticipating and managing competition from employees and third parties
- Developing and maintaining a benign publishing environment (this includes protecting freedom of expression and addressing defamation)
- Compliance with relevant legislation such as the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act as well as emerging privacy legislation
- Formulating policies and guidelines to govern use of your IT infrastructure and processing personal information
- Preparing a variety of agreements including service level agreements, leases, trading terms and conditions and so on.
We also have roughly a decade's experience in commercial litigation and general commercial legal work. Our new media services are based, to a large extent, on our general commercial legal expertise which forms a vital foundation. In order for Web and digital media related projects to have real-world applications, they must interface with the commercial world and that is where we come in. We provide the legal glue that connects our clients' creative and innovative work with the legal demands of the commercial world.
Our innovative clients include banks, marketing and advertising agencies, mobile service providers, large publications and other innovative companies seeking to develop, profitably exploit and manage their intellectual property both online and offline.
What does all this cost?
We have adopted a flexible fee structure which includes project-based fees, traditional hourly rates and retainers. We believe in basing our fees on the value we add to your business rather than on the number of hours we spend in an office. That being said we retain our time-based fee structure for those clients who prefer it. For more information about our fee structure and the terms governing our services, please review our terms of appointment
