Drafting and advice
We draft and negotiate construction and engineering contracts.
When potential difficulties first arise, we aim to give prompt and commercially astute advice about how to resolve them as fast and as economically as possible.
We have advised on a wide range of construction and engineering projects, both within Australia and overseas, based on the AS series of contracts, FIDIC, MBA, HIA and many other bespoke or standard contract forms.
Our style is to try to keep contractual documents as short and as commercially effective as possible; we seek to avoid massively large suites of contract documents that are drawn from barely relevant precedents, and also to avoid excessively onerous or unrealistic conditions that are unlikely to be upheld by any tribunal.
We see our role as lawyers as supportive of our clients’ commercial objectives, not to encrust our clients’ dealings with inappropriate legalities.
Contact Jeanie Elliott
Dispute resolution; case conduct and advocacy
We have extensive experience of conducting cases and of advocacy throughout the court system.
In the modern dispute resolution environment, of course, litigation in court is just one of an arsenal of available systems, including arbitration, adjudication, expert determination and various ADR systems including mediation, mini-trial and hybrid processes. These other options often provide much better value for money for the disputants, and do much less damage to their commercial objectives. Our lawyers have considerable experience of these processes.
Robert Fenwick Elliott’s book on the practice and procedure of construction disputes is the leading work on these procedural issues.
Our approach is find the fastest and most cost-effective way to resolve disputes. We focus, not on the gross result that might be achieved in a court judgment or arbitrator’s award, but on the likely net burden or benefit to the client when the legal costs and other overheads of dispute are taken into account. We aim for a climate in which we never need to negotiate for our clients out of fear, but neither are we afraid to negotiate.
Contact Tom Grace
Contact Kerry Colmer