Choosing the right business structure in Nigeria
Sole proprietorship, partnership or limited company? The choice affects your liability, your tax position and your ability to raise money.
Read articlePractice area
Corporate & Commercial Law
How a business is owned, how it contracts, and how it grows.
Overview
What this work involves
Most commercial problems are decided long before anyone reaches a courtroom. They are decided by how a company was set up, what its shareholders agreed, and what its contracts actually say.
We work with founders incorporating a first company, established businesses restructuring, and organisations negotiating agreements that will shape the next few years. The job is the same each time: understand the commercial objective, then build the structure that supports it.
What we help clients with
The work, set out plainly.
Company formation and structuring
Choosing the right entity, drafting constitutional documents, and setting up share structures that match what the founders agreed.
Shareholder and partnership agreements
Who owns what, how decisions get made, what happens when someone leaves, and how disagreements are resolved.
Commercial contracts
Drafting, reviewing and negotiating supply, distribution, service, agency, licensing and employment agreements.
Corporate governance
Board procedures, statutory registers, resolutions and the filings that keep a company in good standing.
Mergers and restructuring
Legal due diligence, transaction documents and the corporate steps to complete a change of ownership.
Joint ventures
Structuring arrangements between businesses so contributions, control and exit are clear from the outset.
Typical matters
Examples of instructions in this area.
These illustrate the kind of work this practice area covers. They are not descriptions of specific client matters.
- Incorporating a company with bespoke constitutional documents
- Negotiating a shareholders' agreement between founders with unequal contributions
- Reviewing a master services agreement before signature
- Restructuring related businesses under a holding company
- Running legal due diligence ahead of an acquisition
Frequently asked questions
Questions we are asked most often.
You can complete a straightforward registration yourself through the Corporate Affairs Commission portal. Legal input pays for itself in the decisions around it: which entity type suits your plans, how shares are split, and what the constitutional documents say. Those are expensive to unwind later.
The articles are the public constitutional document filed with the registry. A shareholders' agreement is a private contract between the owners. It covers the sensitive commercial points, such as vesting, veto rights and what happens if a founder leaves, that owners prefer to keep off the public record.
Reviewing an agreement almost always costs a fraction of arguing about it later. For routine contracts, a short review of the clauses that carry real risk (payment, liability, termination, ownership of work) is usually enough.
It depends on the structure, the parties, and how quickly information arrives. We give you an indicative timetable at the start and tell you promptly if anything changes it.
These answers are general.
They describe how things usually work, not how they will work in your situation. Requirements
and timelines change. Please take advice before acting.
Related insights
Further reading
What actually belongs in a shareholders' agreement
Most founder disputes are not about the law. They are about something that was assumed rather than agreed.
Read articleSeven clauses worth reading twice in any commercial contract
You will not read every word of every agreement. If you only have twenty minutes, these are the clauses where the money sits.
Read articleOther practice areas
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