Put clear rules in place between individual shareholders

This is usually worth doing when shares are held by real people with different roles, expectations or levels of control, such as founders, family members, early investors or active operators in the business. A handshake understanding can work while things are simple, but problems often appear when someone wants to sell, stop working in the business, or block a decision. A written agreement can set out voting thresholds, transfer rules, pre-emptive rights and exit mechanics before those issues become urgent.

It commonly covers how major decisions are approved, what happens if new shares are issued, when shares can be sold or transferred, and how deadlocks are handled. It may also address director appointments, dividend approaches, confidentiality, restraint-style protections where appropriate, and what happens if a shareholder leaves, dies or breaches the agreement. The exact content depends on your ownership setup, but the aim is to record the rules between the individual shareholders rather than relying only on informal understandings or basic company records.

The level of tailoring often depends on the number of shareholders, whether they are all active in the business, whether any hold different rights, and whether there are founder-specific protections or investor expectations to reflect. Existing company records also matter, including your constitution and any earlier shareholder arrangements. If there are planned capital raises, vesting arrangements or agreed exit pathways, those points should usually be built into the drafting. Completion steps can depend on the company records and any existing shareholder arrangements.

A template may be a starting point for understanding the issues, but it often stays too generic for the actual ownership relationship. It may not line up with your constitution, your share classes, or the commercial deal between the individuals involved. That can create confusion later, especially around transfer restrictions, minority protections or deadlock clauses. A tailored document is generally more useful where the shareholders have different roles, funding contributions or expectations about control. Tax and accounting consequences may need separate advice alongside the legal drafting.

Timing depends on how settled the commercial terms are and whether there are existing documents to review. In many matters, the main variables are how quickly instructions are provided, whether the shareholders agree on key points, and whether the company records are complete and consistent. If there is already a constitution or earlier agreement in place, we may need to check how the new document fits with those records. The If extra support is needed, we will explain it upfront and quote it separately before you proceed.

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 Shareholders Agreement Individual service, pricing starts from $900.00.

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.