Leading Adviser 2019

Acquisition International - Leading Adviser 2019 195 Jun19084 22 Acquisition International - Issue 7 2019 MIA Contract Lawyers is a boutique, commercial legal practice. The firm’s Principal, Martin Algie, has been awarded AI’s Leading Adviser 2019, selected as the Leading Franchise and Distribution Lawyer of the Year, Australia. Following this win, we caught up with Martin who provided us with a detailed glimpse into this extraordinary NewLaw practice and the services both himself and the team at MIA Contract Lawyers offers to clients. eading the firm to exceptional heights and offering their clients with a personalised service, is MIA Contract Lawyers Principal, Martin Algie. Martin is passionate about helping others establish and succeed in business. He has built his firm, guided by that ethos. Supporting Martin in his mission to provide clients with an award- winning service is the experienced, hard-working and committed team forming the backbone of MIA Contract Lawyers. Martin has engendered an internal culture of excellence, balanced with flexibility and sensitivity to staff requirements, producing a true NewLaw firm, as he further explains. “The success of MIA Contract Lawyers is, to a large extent, dependent on recruiting and retaining quality, senior staff. By being senior staff, they have a direct, unmediated relationship with the client, ensuring that the client always gets personal treatment. In addition to this, staff are also encouraged to focus on identifying what the client perceives as value and delivering that as part of the firm’s service provision.” MIA Contract Lawyers comprises two primary business units - general commercial transactional work (General Contracting) and franchising. The former sees the Firm documenting and negotiating the terms of transactions for clients. This includes establishing businesses with terms and conditions of trade, partnership agreements and shareholder agreements, as well as documenting all aspects of supply chain, including procurement contracts and distribution agreements. In the franchising space, the firm has advised numerous companies wishing to franchise their businesses, join franchises and companies fighting major franchise disputes. Martin has devised numerous strategies that the firm uses to engineer an exit for clients that need to get out of the franchise, noting that, “the Harvard Negotiation Course and years of experience negotiating high-level disputes and contracts, puts me in the perfect position to get clients out of these situations in the best shape possible.” Getting the Full Value from Contracts L MIA Contract Lawyers moved to fixed-price or value pricing a few years ago. Martin commented that “as we do not charge ‘on the clock’, we can provide that ongoing support so that our clients feel secure and safe when taking that step of franchising their business or becoming a franchisee.” Martin is a senior commercial lawyer, with over two decades of experience. Throughout his career, he has been recognised for his remarkable services, recently being selected in Acquisition Intl.’s Leading Adviser 2019 where he was righteously awarded the accolade “Leading Franchise and Distribution Lawyer of the Year, Australia.” Bringing the interview to a close, Martin discusses legaltech and the firm’s plans for 2019-2020. There are three aspects of that. The first is implementing systems to improve team communication and collaboration. The second being contract automation, delivering efficiencies internally and offering clients self-help options at low cost; and the last one is artificial intelligence assisted contract management. Martin signs off by providing further details about the last initiative as it requires further explanation. “The last initiative is one of our latest projects called, ContractControl™, an AI-based contract management tool.” For this purpose, MIA Contract Lawyers has partnered with ThoughtRiver in the United Kingdom and Wolters Kluwer in Holland to produce a tool that is able to harvest relevant information from a repository of legacy contracts and create alerts to ensure compliance. ContractControl™ is the tool that MIA Contract Lawyers will use for a brand new service offering, a contract management service. Martin explains that “we will follow up counterparties for clients, ensuring they do what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it. We will work closely with stakeholders, ensuring that every opportunity created by a contract is exploited or at least considered, but certainly not neglected. This is a major value-add for our clients, in addition to an opportunity to develop a totally different target market, largely medium to large companies. MIA Contract Lawyers also plans making the ContractControl™ tool available for clients to use themselves. “ContractControl™ can easily save corporate stakeholders a day a month, avoiding the need to search for relevant contracts and distil the information they need to do their jobs. It saves Corporate Counsel hours of wasted effort, assisting those stakeholders, allowing Corporate Counsel to spend more time on high value- added work.” Looking ahead to what the future holds for the firm, the team at MIA Contract Lawyers will continue to provide an impeccable service, ensuring that they not only meet the requirements which have been set by their clients, but also surpass their expectations. Contact: Martin I. Algie Address: Level 1, 207 Lygon Street, Carlton 3053 Victoria, Australia Telephone: +613 9349 1098 Cell: +61 421 180 636 Web Address: www.miacontractlawyers.com.au www.miafranchiselawyers.com.au Jun19084 L adi Franchise and Distribution Lawyer f the Year, Australia