Greystone Lawyers

Trusted legal counsel for individuals, families and businesses, delivered with integrity, discretion and care.

Briefings

• Restraint of trade clauses: what actually holds upNon-compete and non-solicitation clauses are common in employment contracts, but not all of them are enforceable. What makes a restraint reasonable, and what to check before you sign or rely on one.
• Powers of attorney: planning for a day you hope never comesA power of attorney decides who speaks for you if illness or injury ever takes away your capacity to decide for yourself. Here is what the documents do, and why setting them up early matters.
• Separating well: property and parenting, calmlySeparation is difficult, but it does not have to be adversarial. A plain-language guide to how property and parenting arrangements are approached, and how to keep the process constructive.
• Reviewing a commercial lease: the clauses that biteA commercial lease can commit your business to years of rent and obligations. These are the clauses that most often catch tenants out, and what to negotiate before you sign.
• Understanding legal costs: how fees really workLegal costs feel opaque from the outside. Here is a plain explanation of how lawyers charge, what a costs agreement should tell you, and the questions worth asking before you engage.
• When do you actually need a commercial lawyerNot every business decision needs a lawyer, but a handful genuinely do. A practical guide to the moments where early legal counsel saves money, time and sleepless nights.
• Buying property: the legal checklistA property purchase is likely the largest contract you will ever sign. Here is what your lawyer checks before you commit, and the questions worth asking before you fall in love with a place.
• What a good shareholders' agreement coversWhen a business is going well, nobody reads the shareholders’ agreement. When it is not, it is the only thing that matters. Here is what a well-drafted one should address before you need it.
• Wills & estates: the basics everyone should sortEstate planning is not only for the wealthy or the elderly. A short guide to the handful of documents every adult should have in place, and what happens if you do not.
• Facing a commercial dispute: your first five stepsA dispute has landed on your desk, a demand letter, an unpaid invoice, a breached contract. What you do in the first days often shapes the outcome. Five steps to take before you react.
• Signing a personal guarantee: read this firstA personal guarantee quietly removes the wall between your business and your home. What you are really promising when you sign one, and how to limit the risk before you do.
• When a renovation becomes a building disputeDefective work, blown budgets and a builder who has stopped answering, building disputes are among the most stressful there are. How they arise, and the calm first moves that protect your position.
• Binding financial agreements: what makes them stickA “prenup” is only worth the certainty it delivers, and a carelessly made one can be set aside when it matters most. What a binding financial agreement can do, and the requirements that keep it standing.
• Blended families and the estate plan that holdsSecond marriages, stepchildren and children from a previous relationship make estate planning genuinely harder. How to provide for a new partner and your own children without setting them against each other.
• Contesting a will: who can challenge, and whenA will is not always the last word. A measured look at who is entitled to contest an estate, the grounds that exist, and why the strict time limits make early advice essential.
• Made redundant: your rights, and the trapsRedundancy is meant to be about the role, not the person, a distinction that carries real legal weight. What a genuine redundancy requires, and the traps that turn one into an unfair dismissal.
• Unfair dismissal: what the law actually protectsBeing sacked feels unfair almost by definition, but the law draws a narrower line than most people expect. What unfair dismissal really means, and the steps that decide whether a dismissal stands.
• Directors’ duties when the company is in troubleA company is its own legal person, until it starts to fail, and the law begins to look through it to the people in charge. What directors owe, and where personal liability can begin.
• Buying a business: what due diligence really uncoversThe price is agreed and the handshake is warm, which is exactly when to look harder. What proper due diligence digs up before you buy a business, and the surprises it is designed to catch.
• Skinny Higgins: the entrepreneur who built on solid legal foundationsSkinny Higgins is the entrepreneur whose success rested less on the idea than on the legal foundations beneath it, the right structure, watertight contracts, protected IP, and a commercial dispute won on the paperwork.
• The indemnity clause: the line that can sink youIt is one sentence in a long agreement, and it can quietly transfer someone else’s entire risk onto your balance sheet. What an indemnity actually does, and how to read one before you sign.

All briefings