Commercial law · Johannesburg

We act for the business, not for the industry it is in.

Eleven of us, in one room, in Rosebank. There is no corporate department that never speaks to the litigation department, because there are no departments. What there is instead is a partner who knows your sector well enough to read your contract the way your customer will.

The five sectors Recent matters

Four attorneys around a timber table in a working office, mid-discussion; one laughing with her hand raised, one talking with both hands out, one writing, one listening. — Plate IRosebank, a Thursday afternoon. Four directors and somebody else's supply agreement. The photograph is of an argument, which is most of what the work is.

01 — Sectors

A supply agreement is not a supply agreement.

It is a citrus offtake, or a component contract with a listed customer, or a franchise schedule. The law is the same. What matters is knowing which clause your counterparty always fights about, and that is sector knowledge rather than legal knowledge.

Manufacturing

Terms of supply · Equipment finance · Debt recovery · B-BBEE structuring

Supply agreements, plant finance, and the customer who has stopped paying but is too big to lose.

Agriculture

Offtake agreements · Land transactions · Water use rights · Farm workers

Land, leases, offtake agreements, and the water rights nobody thinks about until they matter.

Retail and franchising

Franchise agreements · Retail leases · Consumer Protection Act · Trade marks

Franchise agreements, leases in centres, and the disclosure obligations that come with both.

Professional services

Shareholders agreements · Restraints · Buy-sell · Professional indemnity

Shareholding between partners who are also friends, and what happens when one of them leaves.

Technology

SaaS agreements · POPIA · IP assignment · Investment rounds

Licensing, data, and contracts written for a business model that did not exist five years ago.

A working wine cellar in the Cape Winelands: rows of oak barrels stacked two high, a wet concrete floor, and a cellar worker in an apron far down the row. — Plate IIAgriculture. Offtake agreements, land, and the water use rights that nobody reads until the season they matter.

The floor of an automotive component factory: yellow machinery and steel racking running away from camera, with two people small in the frame beside a machine. — Plate IIIManufacturing. A liability cap is an abstraction until it is attached to this much plant and a customer who has stopped paying.

02 — Matters

What we have actually done, and for how much.

Anonymised, because they are our clients’ matters and not ours to advertise. Values given where the client has agreed. Everything else on this site is a claim; this is the evidence.

2026

Acted for a Gauteng component manufacturer on a three-year supply agreement with a listed automotive customer, including the liability cap that the customer had never previously conceded.

R240m

2026

Restructured the shareholding of a six-partner engineering practice, including a buy-sell mechanism funded by policy, after one partner gave notice.

Confidential

2025

Defended a franchisee against cancellation of a franchise agreement in the High Court; settled on terms permitting an orderly sale of the outlet.

R18m

2025

Advised a software business on its Series A, including the IP assignment position left over from three years of contractor development.

R65m

2025

Recovered arrear rental and rates from a national tenant across four retail centres, without terminating a lease the landlord wanted to keep.

R9.4m

2024

Negotiated a ten-year offtake agreement for a citrus producer, including the force majeure clause that was tested two seasons later.

Confidential

The full ledger

03 — Fees

Four ways to be charged. Three of them are not hourly.

An hourly rate is a firm asking a business to carry a risk the firm is better placed to price. We use it for litigation, where nobody can scope the work, and for very little else.

The rates in full

Fixed fee

A number before the work starts, not after. Shareholders agreements, supply terms, leases, restraints, franchise documents.

Most contract work

Capped fee

An hourly rate with a ceiling you approve. If the deal runs long the overrun is ours, which is a discipline on us rather than a favour to you.

Transactions

Monthly retainer

A fixed monthly amount for the calls, the reviews and the questions that do not justify opening a file. Most of our manufacturing clients are on one.

Ongoing advice

Hourly

Where nobody can scope the work in advance. Billed monthly with the narration in plain English, so you can see what you paid for.

Litigation only

04 — The firm

Eleven people. No departments.

A woman in her forties in an office corridor, turned away from camera and glancing back, caught mid-laugh, holding a folder against her hip. — Plate IVNomsa Radebe, director. The corridor is where most of the firm's decisions are actually taken.

Four directors, five associates, two candidate attorneys. Everybody sits on the same floor.

The director who drafts your agreement is the one who argues about it two years later. Nothing is handed over.

We brief counsel where counsel is worth briefing, and we tell you what that costs before we do it.

We turn work away. A matter outside the five sectors goes to a firm that does it every week, and we will tell you which.

Who we are

Send us the agreement you are worried about.

We will read it and tell you in one call whether it needs work, what that would cost, and whether it is worth doing. There is no charge for that call and no obligation after it.

011 000 0000 Or send it in writing