Weir & Associates is a ‘business law
firm’ with many years of experience dealing with ‘business-relevant’ areas of
law. For background information, we
would refer you to our website at http://www.hongkonglaw.com/weirlaw
from which you may note the focus of our practice is business oriented.
We have many years of experience dealing with
commercial matters including the specific matters on which we understand your
office requires assistance, i.e. drafting and reviewing agreements and
compiling, issuing and monitoring tenders, employment law, corporate compliance
matters and so on. Indeed, a large
part of our business involves assisting and liasing
with clients with all aspects of the drafting and review of agreements required
for their local or international business interests, so that we believe your
PRC/cross-border matters can be dealt with expeditiously. As our clients
encompass a wide range of business concerns in, including the
telecommunications, information technology, public relations, promotion, construction and pharmaceutical industries. The multi linguistic capabilities of our
solicitors and support staff further allow the translation of agreements into
or from Chinese and liaison with both Cantonese and Mandarin speaking clients.
In response to your specific enquiries on our services,
we have set out below brief details on: -
1. Corporate Secretarial Services;
2. Employment Services;
3. Information Technology Legal Services;
and
4. Intellectual Property Rights.
Corporate Secretarial Services
Service: Acting as
a Corporate Compliance Secretary for the Company.
Service Charges:
US$1,000.00 for the first year.
The services to be
provided will include: -
a) Acting as Company Secretary;
b) Preparing and maintaining annual minutes;
c) Preparing and maintaining company records
and statutory books on an annual basis;
d) Maintaining and updating directors’
information; and
e) Filing of annual returns.
Employment Services
Service Charges: Please refer to the attached Tariff for Legal Advice
a)
Employment Matters/Disputes;
i)
Preparing and advising on employment/consultancy
contracts between on-shore and off-shore, tax implications, employer’s and
employee’s rights.
ii)
Advise and arranging for
representation (non-lawyer) at labour tribunal in
employment disputes.
iii)
Advise and acting on
litigious matters in District Court or High Court, including injunctions,
breach of covenants, breach of fiduciary duties.
b) Inbound and Outbound Employment Visas;
c) Change of Status (from visitor visa to
employment visa);
d) Trainee Visa;
e) Re-entry Visas (including the preparation
and notarization of Declaration of Identity for Taiwanese passport holders),
and Extensions of Stay;
f)
g) Dependent Visa;
h) Student Visa; and
i)
Renewal
of all of the above visas.
Information
Technology Legal Services
Service Charges: Please refer to the attached Tariff for Legal Advice
a)
Perusal and advising on Contract and License Agreement
(English & Chinese) on both hardware and software;
b)
Drafting of Joint Venture Agreements (English &
Chinese);
c)
Regulatory Compliance and Representation; and
d)
Confidentiality and Non-disclosure Agreements.
e)
Contractual Disputes/Litigation
(delay/non-performance/non-payment)
Service Charges: Please refer to the attached Tariff for Legal Advice
a) Patents, Trade Marks and Design
Applications/Registration (
b) Copyrights and Copyright
Infringements;
c) Technology Transfer Agreements;
d) Distribution License Agreements; and
e) Litigation support for all of the
above.
Virtual Legal In-House
As an adjunct to our normal retainer arrangements, we
have the capabilities of offering your operation and project full legal
support, either at our offices or at yours, in a variety of capacities
(clerks, legal assistants or solicitors) for variant time periods. We have found that our clients’
requirements vary greatly with regards to legal support; at different times and
for different projects they may require clerks, corporate secretarial, legal
executive or solicitor level assistance.
We are able to provide such representatives from any of these levels on
an hourly, daily or weekly basis depending on the requirements of your
organization. For details on our
charges, please refer to the attached Tariff for Legal Advice, which gives an
outline of our fee structure which can be tailored to suit a
particular organizations requirements.
We believe this approach will perform the dual
function of enabling you to conserve costs by not having the necessity of
additional full salaried or full time legal staff, while at the same time will
give you the ability to access the broader legal capabilities of our law
offices as and when necessary. From
such a working relationship, we would be able to gauge an ongoing knowledge of
your company’s specific legal requirements and we would have the ability to
provide enhanced services more efficiently as the occasion arose. Generally, we would designate a specific
solicitor and a support team to meet your requirements.
We offer clients an entire team of lawyers, paralegals and legal clerks to
work with your company according to the then current demand of your company.
Client will always be assigned the most suitable legal team member (paralegals,
lawyers or clerks) for the work at hand, whether it is drafting legal
documents, litigating or a variety of other legal matters that the company may
be facing.
Our legal team is fluent in various languages, licensed in several
jurisdictions, and possess the necessary business law expertise to meet
any specific demands. The team
members often are arranged with a mix of pre-agreed time in your premises and
"special assignments" calling for more "in-house"
attention.
We believe that
such an approach would facilitate the goals of your company by enabling it to
access a broad range of legal expertise at a most efficient and reasonable
cost. rather than engaging one individual, you would
gain access to the entire team expertise, each available at a cost that more
appropriately reflects the level of the task assigned.
Weir &
Associates is an active member of associations and organizations including: -
The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce (香港總商會), Federation of
Hong Kong Industries (香港工業總會), The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (加拿大總商會), The Law Society of HK (香港律師會) and Legal
Counsel International. Moreover, our firm is the sole
representative office in Hong Kong/PRC for the Network of Leading Law Firms (web site www.nllf.com), a rapidly expanding worldwide
association of law firms.
Our senior solicitor, Cheonghar
Wong, is our head of litigation.
She is a qualified Notary as well as holding practise
certificates in
We have fifteen (15) lawyers in our local Hong
Kong offices at present, comprising thirteen lawyers who are locally qualified
and three who are ‘foreign’ lawyers; collectively we are qualified in
jurisdictions including Hong Kong, the PRC, England, Australia, Canada, the
USA, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Our
support staff, including clerks and paralegals, number in excess of thirty-five (35); they are fluent in many languages besides English including
Cantonese, Mandarin, Hakka (and other Chinese
dialects), Napalese and Tagalog
as well as having a working knowledge of Japanese and French.
We also have
working associations with foreign law firms throughout Asia and North America,
including China (Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guangzhou,
Shanghai, Shenzhen and Xiamen), Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar), Korea
(Seoul), India (Mumbai), Thailand (Bangkok), Taiwan (Taipei) and the United States (including Los Angeles
and New York).
Having
acted in numerous conveyancing transactions (both
projects as well as single units in Hong Kong and the PRC as well as internationally
(Canada) and assisted in a number of local and international construction
ventures, our office is also highly qualified and experienced in all drafting,
format, procedural and publication requirements of tenders for both Hong Kong
and overseas.
We
have identified key staff whom we believe will meet
the requirements we discussed in our recent meeting and would be most pleased
to meet with you and any other appropriate members of your group to discuss our
capabilities and to take whatever further steps you deem necessary to begin our
relationship.
We would appreciate an opportunity to discuss the above
matters in more detail, in this regard, we look
forward to hearing from you.
Our fees would
usually be agreed prior to undertaking work on a specific project on clients’
behalf; below see typical costing examples.
TYPE
|
TYPICAL
COST
|
|
|
|
|
determined on a staff required basis against an
estimated budget |
|
|
|
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|
Employment
rates Litigation Immigration
(HK Work Visas) Corporate/commercial |
HK$1,000 per hour to senior lawyer rates of HK$5,500
per hour |
|
|
|
|
► Preparing single lease (excluding GPA
land search, minimal photocopying & other disbursements) |
HK$1,500 - $5,500
|
|
|
|
|
► Review of lease |
- Case by case, (generally on a
time basis) |
|
|
|
|
► Real Estate (mortgage; purchase/sale –
licensing) |
- Case
by case, as agreed |
|
|
|
|
► Notarization |
- minimum HK$1,000 |