Corporate law is a varied field, ranging from the everyday running of companies to complex cross-border transactions. Clients in this area are just as varied, from small scale businesses to multinational corporations.
According to The Essential Elements of Corporate Law: What is Corporate Law? published by Harvard Law School, a principle function of corporate law is to provide business enterprises with a legal form that possesses the five basic legal characteristics of the business corporation: legal personality, limited liability, transferable shares, delegated management under a board structure, and investor ownership.
The paper notes that a second, equally important function of corporate law is reducing the ongoing costs of organising business through the corporate form. It states that “corporate law does this by facilitating coordination between participants in corporate enterprise, and by reducing the scope for value-reducing forms of opportunism among different constituencies.
“Indeed, much of corporate law can usefully be understood as responding to three principal sources of opportunism: conflicts between managers and shareholders, conflicts among shareholders, and conflicts between shareholders and the corporation’s other constituencies, including creditors and employees.”
AllAboutLaw.co.uk, a market-leading platform for aspiring lawyers, states that a corporate lawyer requires an exemplary knowledge of business law, current trends and legislative and regulatory developments. They must also have a familiarity with corporate and business law in other jurisdictions where clients have operations or are looking to invest.
“A corporate lawyer needs to have strong communication and negotiation skills, an excellent academic background, the ability to think outside of the box, exceptional analytical skills and meticulous attention to detail,” notes the site.
It also highlights that teamwork is an essential feature of most corporate transactions, therefore interpersonal and people management skills are of great significance for a corporate lawyer, adding that “a good corporate lawyer is ambitious, thrives on challenges and relentlessly chases their goals”.
Our Annual Corporate Practice Area Guide lists skilled lawyers capable of meeting your corporate law needs in multiple jurisdictions.
