How does legal opinion secure your business
What is the legal opinion? In what cases you need to prepare the legal opinion? What should it include? We have prepared the answers.
This post was firstly published on our website blog.
Legal opinion is a written document that includes a detailed legal opinion on a particular issue or aspect of the customer’s activities. A Legal Opinion is drawn up solely in the interests of the customer to reduce the risk of violation of the Law during the implementation of the transaction/launch of the project and to understand the upcoming stages fully.
A Legal Opinion allows you to get an independent opinion of a Lawyer/Attorney on a non-standard issue and determine whether the planned legally significant actions are appropriate and legal in the particular jurisdiction under consideration.
Cases that may require preparation of legal opinion
- In case it is necessary to understand what permits/licenses are required to start a company
- In transactions on the transfer of intellectual property rights
- In case of international merger/acquisition transactions
- When dealing with venture capital in foreign jurisdictions
- For crowdfunding activities
- In case of financial transactions to assess legal risks
- In cross-border transactions with securities
- In case of conclusion of investment transactions
- For Due Diligence of investment transactions abroad
- When launching ICO/STO
- When launching a cryptocurrency project: crypto exchange
- In case of activity as a Forex Broker or Forex Dealer.
By ordering a Legal Opinion, you are guaranteed to receive a detailed analysis and an objective opinion of a qualified Lawyer/Attorney, which you can refer to in the future.
Features of preparation
Since the customer of a Legal Opinion expects complete legal clarity and relies on the accuracy and reliability of the legal analysis and legal risks contained in the document, a correctly drawn up Legal Opinion is distinguished by the clarity of the wording, the certainty of the initial circumstances, the presence of unambiguously interpreted conclusions with references to the legislation of the country of the project’s implementation.
It is important to note that Legal Opinion should not be considered a substitute for legal support. The Parties to the transaction should not expect that they will simultaneously receive the algorithm for implementing the project or conducting the transaction independently by ordering the Legal Opinion.
What include in a legal opinion
- Background Information
This Section of the Legal Opinion usually contains customer’s data about the transaction/project or documents concerning which the Legal Opinion is drawn up. This section also contains information about the applicable Law, depending on the customer’s jurisdiction, in which the legal relationship is taking place.
2. Research (Documents reviewed and inquiries made)
This section reflects the process and results of the study of the submitted documents and the results of collecting the necessary information for the preparation of the Legal Opinion. As a rule, these are transaction documents, constituent documents, minutes of meetings of the company’s Governing Body.
When describing documents, it is indicated whether their originals, projects or copies of these documents have been examined. Besides, the Lawyer/Attorney preparing the Legal Opinion sends a request to the Register of Companies, the Tax and Customs Department, and other Regulatory Authorities as appropriate and records the requests’ results. In this section of the Legal Opinion, the analysis of the customer’s documents is carried out; the result of their study is summarised.
3. Opinion
The third section contains answers to questions of interest to the customer of the Legal Opinion. This section contains the legal conclusion/legal analysis of the transaction. The degree of categorisation of the expressed opinion depends on the number of reservations that accompany it. Reservations may vary depending on the nature of the transaction. In this part, the Lawyer/Attorney also lists potential risks and makes recommendations.
The legal opinion allows you to clearly define your legal rights and help you avoid costly litigation in the future. A Legal Opinion is indispensable in transactions with foreign counterparties and, if issues of several jurisdictions are raised simultaneously, it requires the involvement of appropriate specialists or foreign Lawyers/Attorneys.
The team of Company in Estonia OÜ is happy to accompany your project during the necessary legal procedures. We can also help with the preparation of a Legal Opinion in Estonia.
