Check the legal position before you buy the business

It is generally suited to buyers who are seriously considering a business purchase and want a legal review before they commit further. That might include first-time buyers, existing operators acquiring a competitor, or founders buying a business to expand into a new market. The service is useful where you have access to contracts, corporate records and other sale materials that can be reviewed for legal issues. It is less about producing one sale document and more about understanding what the target business and the proposed deal actually look like from a buyer's perspective.

Common issues include contracts that are missing, unsigned or hard to assign, lease terms that create uncertainty, intellectual property ownership gaps, inconsistent corporate records, and sale terms that shift risk too heavily to the buyer. In some deals, privacy and data handling also matter. The wording should reflect the information your business collects, the reasons it is used and the parties it is shared with, including how it collects, uses and shares information. The work can strengthen your position on the issue in scope, but it cannot account for every operational fact outside the materials provided. or remove the need for commercial judgement.

We can consider financial materials as part of the broader transaction context, especially where they interact with legal issues such as earn-outs, completion adjustments, debt assumptions or statements made by the seller. However, this is still a legal due diligence service rather than accounting or valuation advice. If a financial issue raises a legal question, such as whether the sale terms properly deal with working capital or liabilities, we can comment on that legal angle. Specialist accounting analysis, valuation work and tax advice sit outside the included scope.

After the review, buyers usually decide whether to proceed as planned, renegotiate the commercial terms, ask for further disclosure, or pause the transaction. In practical terms, that may mean raising specific diligence questions, adjusting the proposed price, tightening warranty or indemnity wording, or changing completion conditions. We can explain the legal significance of the issues identified and what they may mean for the next stage of the deal. If you need further help with sale documents or negotiations, that can be discussed as a separate piece of work.

The fixed-fee covers a legal review of the materials provided for the transaction, a summary of key findings, and advice on buyer-side issues such as structure, risk allocation and negotiation priorities. We can point out where further questions should be asked or where a sale agreement may need stronger protections. The service does not automatically include open-ended negotiation, tax structuring, technical implementation work, or post-completion support. If the matter grows beyond the stated review and advice work, we can scope additional assistance separately.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Buyer Due Diligence Pack service, pricing starts from $1,200.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.