Tuesday, May 31, 2011

What is Commercial Litigation

One aspect of society that sees a high volume of legal activity is the business world. Due to the complexities of business relationships, conflicts can and do often arise. How these conflicts are settled in a court of law is known as commercial litigation. Lawyers who mostly represent clients in these cases in California are often a Los Angeles commercial litigation attorney.

There are many different scenarios in which commercial litigation may be needed. One such example is the purchasing of real estate. A lot of legal paperwork is required to acquire land for business reasons. Conflicts are also common and will need to be resolved through commercial litigation.

This area of law can also include mergers. A merger occurs when a business purchases and absorbs another business. Things a Los Angeles commercial litigation attorney or breach of contract attorney may be involved with during a merger can include filing legal paperwork, attempting to get the merger approved by government regulators, setting up the initial stock offering, and negotiating employee contracts.

However, many things may go wrong during a merger that may require legal intervention. For example, the company being bought out may have many outstanding debts or pending lawsuits that will need to be dealt with. Commercial litigation will probably need to take place to settle any disputes that can arise before the merger is finalized.

Another thing that business lawyers may be involved in is drafting employee contracts. One of the things that may be included in contracts are agreements with employees to make sure that things like trade secrets, business processes, and other intellectual property are protected. If an employee leaves for another company, he or she may try to sell those company secrets. Clauses in employee contracts are included to make sure that if that does occur the company can recover damages.

However, one goal of many companies is to avoid court all together. This is due to the fact that lawyers’ fees and lengthy court battles can be quite expensive and time consuming. One way to do this is by including an arbitration agreement in employee contracts. During arbitration, an independent entity will be brought in to settle legal disputes without the involvement of an actual court.

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