Areas of Practice

Wine, Hospitality and Licensing

Our team members share extensive knowledge and experience when it comes to the Wine and Hospitality industry. This has helped us better understand the intricacies of legal practice within this sector, and we are able to offer our clients valuable advice and guidance relevant to these unique factors. Some of the more unique areas we specialise in are:

• Liquor licencing applications and associated advice;
• acquisitions and disposals of wine businesses, hotels, restaurants, cafes and other licensed premises;
• intellectual property advice;
• wine equalisation tax advice;
• and commercial agreements and contracts (e.g. wine and vineyard supply, manufacturing, distribution agreements).

Wills and Estates

Protecting your hard-earned money and ensuring it passes through to the right people is a serious decision we all have to make down the track. There are few effective ways to pass down money and assets through your estate, which can increase the prosperity of your chosen beneficiaries. One of these alternatives is using testamentary trusts, which provides your beneficiaries with access to significant tax concessions and levels of asset protection. Estate planning is a specialised area, so ensuring you receive well-informed advice during this process is paramount. We are experts in the field and can assist you in a variety of areas, including with:

• Wills, powers of attorney and advance care directive documents;
• complex succession and estate planning matters;
• administration of deceased estates;
• applications for grants of probate, including complex grants where a person has died without a valid will;
• disputing a will or defending an inheritance (family provision) claim;
• and complex succession and estate planning.

Tax

Commercial transactions can often have consequences for the tax payer, which is an important point of consideration come tax time. Our team are able to structure transactions which lead to positive tax outcomes. Understanding the consequences of malpractice is integral to any commercial transaction, which is why we aim to achieve the best results while following all of the relevant legal requirements. We are able to provide detailed tax advice and we cater to a wide range of clients including businesses, accountants and financial planners.

To further elaborate, our tax advice may be relevant to:

• federal taxes (including GST, CGT, FBT, WET and income tax);
• state taxes (including stamp duty, payroll tax and land tax);
• superannuation;
• establishing effective business and asset holding structures;
• asset protection;
• estate planning (see also our Wills & Estates area here);
• and business succession.

Property Law

We are able to assist in many aspects of property transactions, from development, leasing, financing and securitisation together with advising and negotiating relevant contractual terms. It is important that you understand your rights under all property related transactions in order to enforce them.

We can help you by preparing and providing advice in relation to:

• Conveyancing (see here);
• commercial leases;
• contracts for the sale of both commercial and residential land;
• and mortgages.

Intellectual Property

Protecting the intellectual property of your business can be the most important aspect of ensuring its success and value long-term. We have the experience to assist you in successfully registering your trade mark, or opposing and defending other registrations.

We can help by:

• Advising you according to the likelihood of your proposed trademark registration;
• preparing your trade mark application;
• filing your trade mark application with IP Australia;
• and acting for you in overcoming any objections to your trade-marks registration.

Corporate and Commercial Law

In addition to our specialist areas, we are commercial lawyers. We’re able to assist in many other corporate and commercial scenarios and we pride ourselves on providing pragmatic advice in these areas.

We know of many situations where legal costs have far outweighed any potential benefit.  To rectify this problem, we aim to provide a cost-effective solution which exceeds current practice standards.

Please get in touch with us to discuss your situation and we’ll help devise an immediate strategy to suit.

Conveyancing

Whether you are buying, selling, subdividing or conveying property in other ways, we are able to assist you through the process and minimise the complexity of dealing with the Lands Titles Office.

We can assist you when you are buying and/or selling:

• residential property;
• vacant land;
• commercial property; and
• businesses

We can also assist you with:

• undertaking a land division, including Torrens title divisions and/or community title divisions;
• preparing and registering mortgages, caveats, leases and all other property dealings

Our standard residential conveyancing rates start at $1,100 (including GST) for either property purchase or sale.