Joint venture set up with legal support across the key steps

The difficulty is usually not the idea of collaborating, but pinning down how the arrangement will actually operate once money, control and risk are involved. Parties often have different expectations about contributions, management authority, profit sharing, intellectual property, deadlock, and exit rights. If those issues are left vague, the venture can become hard to run even when the commercial relationship starts well. A proper setup process helps surface those points early and record them in the main agreement and any supporting documents needed to make the structure workable.

It commonly begins with confirming the commercial model and deciding whether the venture will operate through a contractual arrangement, a separate entity, or a mix of both. From there, the key terms are documented, the joint venture agreement is prepared, and any supporting documents are put in place to reflect ownership, governance, funding, decision-making and implementation steps. The order matters because some drafting choices depend on earlier structure decisions. If another party is still negotiating core points, the legal work may need to progress in stages rather than all at once.

We usually need a practical picture of who is involved, what each party is contributing, how revenue and costs will be shared, who will control day-to-day decisions, and what should happen if the venture underperforms or one party wants out. It is also helpful to know whether any intellectual property, staff, equipment, licences or customer relationships are being brought into the arrangement. The clearer this information is at the start, the easier it is to identify where the agreement needs detail and which implementation documents may also be required.

There is no single timeframe because progress depends heavily on how quickly the parties settle the commercial points. A straightforward venture with aligned stakeholders can move relatively quickly, while a more complex arrangement may take longer if there are multiple contributors, staged funding, asset transfers, or detailed governance negotiations. Timing can also shift if supporting documents are needed after the main agreement is drafted. In practice, the fastest way to keep momentum is to provide a clear term sheet or summary of the deal and identify any unresolved issues early.

Sometimes. Many joint ventures are private commercial arrangements, but some industries, funding arrangements, landlords, banks, counterparties or licensing bodies may impose their own requirements before the venture can operate as planned. Those external steps can affect timing and documentation. If they appear relevant, we can flag them as part of the setup discussion, but approvals and third-party decisions are not controlled by Sprintlaw. This service covers the legal work described on the page, not the outcome of external applications, consents or commercial approvals from other parties.

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 Joint Venture Set Up service, pricing starts from $2,000.00.

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.