My former Chapman Tripp colleague, Rob Ogilvie, and I have established a new law firm – Franks & Ogilvie.  We’re fully operational from tomorrow, at 2 Woodward Street in the heart of Wellington, looking over Midland Park across from Astoria Cafe.

The other partner in the firm,  Rob Ogilvie, worked with me in Chapman Tripp before becoming a senior in-house lawyer with Telecom. He led Telecom’s negotiations with the government last year over the compulsory separation that has created Chorus.

• Directors who want a second opinion after being scared into paralysis by legal warnings and complexity,
• Businesses threatened by new law coming down the parliamentary track, looking for ways to improve it or derail it;
• People wanting to cut through to the key alternatives in complex multi-party negotiations,
• Cousins arguing over the family  business and looking for a shareholders agreement to take them out of deadlock
• Investors wanting to know their real balance of risks if they have to ignore some parts of securities law to raise capital
• People wanting an objective opinion on their chances and the balance of costs, risks and benefits in a lawsuit.

• commercial lawyers,
• company directors,
• in Parliament,
• a regulator,
• government advisers,
• in-house counsel, and
• commercial negotiators. 

All the large top flight firms have major clients with strong and sometimes conflicting interests in the outcome of public law advocacy. 

We see a real gap for public law legal advice tied to deep commercial experience.  Sir Geoffrey Palmer left Chapman Tripp in the early 1990s to set up Chen and Palmer but we have an additional element – we both start and end with a career-long interest in business law.