Check whether your business model may be drifting into franchising

This service is often useful for businesses expanding through licensing, branded partnerships, distribution networks, management arrangements or multi-site models where another operator uses your name, systems or know-how. It can also help if you charge ongoing fees, set detailed operating standards or retain significant control over how another party runs the business. Those features do not automatically mean you have a franchise, but they are common pressure points. An audit helps test how your arrangement looks in substance, not just what it is called.

We look for combinations of factors that can raise franchise risk, such as rights to use a brand, required operating methods, training or manuals, ongoing fees, territorial arrangements and control over day-to-day conduct. We also review whether your documents line up with how the relationship actually works in practice. A common problem is that the paperwork says one thing while the commercial reality says another. That mismatch can create risk if your model is later challenged or needs to be restructured.

A one-off advice session may answer a narrow question, but an audit is better suited where the risk sits across several moving parts. Accidental franchising issues often arise from the combined effect of agreements, fees, brand use, training, systems and operational control. Looking at one document in isolation may miss the bigger picture. This service is designed to assess the model more broadly and give you a written roadmap. If you already know the exact issue and only need targeted advice, a narrower service may be more suitable.

No. The fixed-fee covers the audit work, the legal assessment and the written report described on this page. It does not include regulator filings, tax advice, technical implementation, security remediation or ongoing representation. It also cannot promise a risk-free outcome because the legal position depends heavily on how the arrangement operates in practice, not just the documents. If you want help implementing recommendations after the audit, we can discuss that as a separate scope of work.

That depends on what the review shows. In some cases, the next step may be adjusting agreements or changing how the relationship operates in practice. In others, you may need more detailed franchising advice or fresh documents to support a revised structure. The report is intended to help you decide whether your current model can continue as is, needs refinement, or should be rebuilt on a different legal footing. Any follow-on drafting, negotiations or ongoing representation would be quoted 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 Accidental Franchising Audit 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.