We provide a comprehensive range of legal advice and assistance services for businesses from start-up to exit.

Click on the links below for more information about any of the areas of law listed - and please don't hesitate to contact us if you have a legal issue which is not on the list.

Business Contracts

Disability Discrimination

Employment

Health and Safety

Intellectual Property

Trans-Atlantic trade

Translation service - sign with your eyes open!

Business Contracts
When we talk about business contracts, we mean external contracts - with your customers or suppliers and internal contracts - partnership and shareholder agreements.
Properly tailored business contracts will:

• Work together, so avoiding conflicts between different areas of your business
  
• Clarify and streamline your procedures
  
• Save time and money
  
• Improve relations within your business
  
• Improve relations with customers and suppliers and
  
• Improve cashflow.

Translation service - sign with your eyes open!
We have all, at some time, signed an agreement without reading it carefully. The consequences can be costly enough - in every sense - in our personal lives; but in business there is even more at stake; even more to lose. It's an easy trap to fall into - and an even easier one to avoid. Our translation service, from Legalese to English, helps you to ensure that everyone understands what they're signing before they put ink on paper. As a result, you will:

• Lay a firmer foundation for the business relationship and achieve
• more complete and efficient performance of the contract
• fewer disagreements and
• Faster, More effective resolution of any dispute which may arise.

Back to Top

Disability Discrimination
So many businesses think of the Disability Discrimination Acts 1995 and 2005 as yet more red tape, sent to tie them in knots - as if they didn't have enough already! The truth is that whether you are an employer or potential employer, a provider of goods, services or facilities, an educator or a provider of transport services, you can benefit from understanding the DDA and proactively adopting its principles. You can;

• Recruit and retain the best possible team
• Improve morale within the organization
• Improve public image
• Improve service levels to non-disabled as well as disabled users
• Illustrate social responsibility and ultimately
• Improve your bottom line.

To complement the advice and assistance we offer in this field, (link) "Is the DDA Working for You?" - A Practical Guide to the Disability Discrimination Acts and Employment
Is the first in a series of plain English guides to the Act to be published by Griffiths Legal. This will be followed by guides for sellers of goods and services, educational organizations and those involved in transport - all of which are designed to work together.

Back to Top

Employment
If you are an employer, you will know firsthand how hard it can be to navigate through the maize of rules and regulations. Many businesses try to avoid it by using self-employed people - but even they need guidance to avoidfalling foul of, for example, the Inland Revenue's rules on hidden employees. Just because someone believes they are self-employed does not mean the Revenue will agree! Getting employment law wrong is expensive on all fronts -financemoney, time and reputation.

Now more than ever, if you employ staff, use subcontractors or are considering either, you need specialist advice and guidance. Keeping up to speed with your legal obligations and how to meet them will help you do much more than avoid being sued. It will enable you to:

• Take proper care of one of your most valuable business assets - your people - which will
• Reduce turnover of personnel
• Increase business efficiency - and ultimately
• Safeguard and even improve your market position.

As well as legal advice and guidance, our Products and Publications are designed to help you get it right first time.

Back to Top

Health and Safety
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 (backed up by a wide range of regulations) places a 'duty of care' on employers to take sufficient and appropriate actions to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of their staff.

Many companies find improving workplace health and safety standards provides a financial benefit to the company. Investments are repaid by, for example:

• Improved productivity and efficiency
• Less staff absence
• Less staff turnover
• Improved quality of work
• Reduced insurance premiums

Back to Top

Intellectual Property
Some businesses have rights in "real property" (land);
many more have rights in "personal property" (goods and chattels - furniture, equipment etc);
but every business has some connection with "intellectual property" rights. This might relate to: the content of brochures, websites, design of products or any material,in writing, audio or video, word or image.

As businesses, we protect our land and goods with security measures and insurance - and yet all too often we overlook our intellectual property rights. Even if you don't produce any written material etc, you still have a brand - maybe symbolized by a logo. If your office is broken into and your computer stolen, it's an upheaval - but provided you're insured and your data is backed up, your business will survive; but if your commercial identity is taken and misused, it could be so costly (to your reputation as well as your bank balance) that it could destroy everything you have built. Similarly, if you violate someone else's intellectual property rights, the consequences can be expensive on all fronts.

• By understanding and protecting your intellectual property rights you can:
• safeguard your brand
• Protect income opportunities now and in the future and
• Avoid the costs and stress of litigation.

Back to Top

Trans-Atlantic Trade
Next to the EU, the United States is Britain 's most important trading partner. More and more UK businesses are tapping into the US market, just as American enterprise is tapping into the UK . This is a natural alliance. After all, we share, to a large extent, a common language and heritage. The "special relationship" goes much deeper than politics. That said, in business terms, each is very much a foreign market to the other, particularly when it comes to legal matters. With the help of our colleagues in the US , we can guide you through the maize of case-law versus codification, national laws versus the federal/state split. Whether you are UK-based with an eye on, or a foot in the US, or based in the US with a UK presence or the vision to create one, we can help you make it legal. Our breadth of contacts with other professionals as diverse as accountants and soft skills trainers, makes it possible for you to find other information which could prove invaluable to the success of your trans-Atlantic business plans.

Back to Top