Set up an employee share scheme with legal support from structure to rollout

This service is usually a good fit when your startup has decided it wants to offer equity to staff and needs the legal work to put that decision into effect. That may be because you are hiring senior team members, trying to retain key employees, or formalising an arrangement that has only been discussed informally so far. It is broader than a one-off advice call because it covers the main documents and rollout steps, not just high-level discussion about whether equity might be useful.

The main issues often include who can participate, what they are actually receiving, when rights vest, what happens if someone leaves, and how the scheme interacts with your company constitution and cap table. Disclosure and offer process questions can also matter, depending on how the scheme is structured and who will receive it. Problems often arise when founders focus on the commercial idea only and leave the legal mechanics until later, which can create inconsistencies between plan rules, offer documents and company records.

A template may give you a starting point, but it rarely answers the harder questions about how the scheme should operate in your business. For example, vesting conditions, exercise mechanics, leaver rules and board discretion can all affect how attractive and workable the scheme is. The practical working model can be just as important as the contract wording, especially if founders are trying to reward different types of contributors or align equity with future milestones. Legal support helps connect the documents to the way your startup actually plans to use the scheme.

After the core documents are prepared, the next step is usually to confirm the participant group, finalise the offer terms for each person and issue the supporting communications. We can provide template communications to help explain the scheme at a practical level, alongside the legal documents themselves. Rollout often works best when the plan rules, offer documents and internal approvals are lined up before anything is announced. That helps avoid confusion where staff hear one version of the offer but the formal documents say something narrower or different.

Yes, provided you are at the stage where you want legal input on the likely structure and the documents needed to implement it. The strategy session can help narrow down the approach, but this is not just a brainstorming consult. It is a broader service for startups intending to move ahead with an employee share scheme. If you only want a short discussion about options before deciding whether to proceed, a narrower advice-only service may be the better fit. Tax and accounting consequences may need separate advice as well.

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 Employee share schemes for NZ startups 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.