Commercial/ Business Law

Commercial law (also known as business law), which is an omnibus phrase for a range of legal services designed to support businesses in making money from their products and services, is indispensable in everyday business activities.

CM Advocates Uganda is a multi-disciplinary commercial law firm that specializes in advising on and drafting a wide variety of agreements that businesses enter into on a daily basis.

Clients choose CM Advocates Uganda to benefit from the firm’s commercial awareness and multi-disciplinary skills, as well as the firm’s previous experience and ability to engage, document, and negotiate a deal that meets clients’ objectives and appropriately mitigates their risk.

We appreciate that a number of technical, legal, regulatory, financial, commercial, or operational issues hamper good commercial transactions. It is therefore critical that the client has a commercially aware legal team that is experienced and focused on resolving those issues to help drive the proposed transaction to fruition.

Our results-oriented nature enables us to prioritize our clients’ goals and desired objectives. We are therefore always keen to ensure that we provide value-driven legal guidance on the processes, obligations, risks and business-related issues, which enables our clients to achieve their goals, maximize on profits and minimize risks.

Along with advising on commercial arrangements, often times, the challenge is to simply determine the best approach to helping two or more parties achieve their intended objectives. Along with our counterparts Corporate Law Team, Labour, Employment and Immigration Law Team and Tax Law Team, we regularly advise on such matters, including the choice of special purpose vehicle (i.e., a corporate body or a contractual structure); how to document key deliverables or issues, such as governance; sharing and developing intellectual property; taxation issues, regulatory requirements and potential liability. We partner with clients to give the venture the highest chance of success and help parties understand the transaction’s tax, human resource, competition and other statutory compliance considerations.

At CM Advocates Uganda, we aim to deliver the highest quality of service possible for our clients. We therefore focus on the following specialist areas:

Corporates and individuals deal with a myriad of relationships and contracts that bind them to their suppliers, customers, franchisors, licensors, distributors and other critical business partners. Invariably, a successful commercial contract allows the parties thereto to align their business interests and generate long-term value for all parties to the transaction.

At CM Advocates Uganda, our Commercial Contracts Practice helps structure these relationships and guide clients through the complexities to ensure their contracts provide the necessary framework for success.

Our ‘can-do approach’ and through understanding our client’s business covering the full spectrum of business law issues enables us provide support and advice that is practical and reflects commercial reality. We identify obstacles early in a commercial transaction and provide pragmatic, and often innovative solutions before such issues arise. Where the commercial contracts involve technical issues, our team will include other specialists like tax, labour and employment, intellectual property and IT specialists.

In negotiating commercial contracts and collaborations, our business savvy lawyers invariably play an essential role of ensuring parties do not unconsciously revert to a “zero-sum” mindset and lose sight of the need for critical compromises that are indispensable in ensuring a successful outcome or a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement.

We usually advise purchasers and suppliers on full spectrum of commercial contracts — from sale of goods or services agreements to complex, high value, strategically important alliances, collaborations, consortium, and joint venture arrangements. We have a wealth of experience advising on a wide range of commercial contracts, including:

• distribution, franchising and agency arrangements;
• sourcing and procurement contracts;
• e-commerce, digital and business transformation;
• joint ventures and collaborations arrangements;
• international supply chain arrangements and logistics contracts;
• concessionaire and licensing arrangements;
• maintenance services contracts;
• manufacturing and fabrication agreements;

We represent clients in diverse sectors and industries, including but not limited to, utility companies, manufacturing concerns, consumer goods and retail, franchisors, logistics companies, infrastructure, telecoms, technology and hospitalities.

Contracting with any government entity can be very advantageous in creating more opportunities for a business but it can also present risks and challenges. The laws and regulations governing government contracts vary to an extent from the laws applicable to ordinary contracts.

Our Government Contracts professional team of experts have in-depth substantive knowledge, work closely with government entities and regulators, and therefore understand how the government entities interpret rules and regulations and how they apply the same to contractors.

We offer practical and effective legal guidance in dealing with Government Contracts and also provide our clients with strategic guidance and support throughout the entire life cycle of government contracts from the time the client identifies an opportunity to contract with the Government and approach us through to the bidding process, compliance with regulatory requirements, negotiations of the contacts, perfection process and enforcement. We advise our clients on terminations processes requirements, dispute resolutions or
litigations arising out of government contracts and other contractual arrangements.

Our teams highly regarded negotiation skills also help in ensuring that clients are able to maintain good working relationships with government entities for future posterity’s sake.

Our areas of work include: –

• legal advisory on the procurement laws and procedures;
• negotiations and preparations of government contracts;
• drafting and review of concessionaire agreements;
• legal opinion on the validity and enforcement of government contracts;
• due diligence reviews on government contracts or guarantees;
• legal advisory on legal and regulatory compliance and audits;
• disputes related to government contracts; and
• handling regulatory issues including financing arrangements or guarantees involving government

CM Advocates Uganda has a dedicated team of professionals with practical and technical expertise and a wealth of experience in handling any type of legal and commercial issues relating to agency; franchising and distributorship businesses. We understand all aspects of agency, distributorship and franchising businesses and offer legal advice on issues such as agency law, contract law, intellectual property, internet and technology, quality control, risk management, consumer protection, competition law, import/export laws, data protection, non-disclosure, employment, sector analysis, negotiation, drafting, reviewing, termination or enforcement of agreements.

Our areas of work include:

• negotiation, drafting or review of franchise, agency or distributorship agreements;
• intellectual property rights registrations, renewals, or
• due diligence and advisory on requisite regulatory approvals and licenses;
• legal advisory on trademark availability, software protection, all intellectual property rights protection, enforcement of trademark rights and trademark infringement disputes;
• tax advisory and structuring;
• negotiation or preparation of suitable commercial leases or licenses; and
• dispute resolutions.