The Purpose and Role of a Professional Commercial Lawyer in Israel in Assisting Entrepreneurs and Businesses

No one wants to settle for a less-than-perfect commercial attorney. Why? Because every manger understands that an attorney’s work is highly sensitive and important and could have an immense and critical impact on the business, for better or god forbid for worse.

In addition to being an Israeli commercial lawyer, I am also highly experienced as an entrepreneur, business development officer and counsel of large corporations and businesses of various fields – and all that provide me with a significant added value in my role as a commercial lawyer.

Some of the companies with which I worked as a business manager, business development officer and counsel are amongst the largest and prominent in their field in Israel.

Companies dealing with: food and beverages, food additives and cosmetics, consumer goods, distribution, bars and restaurants, online digital businesses, internet, media and high-tech, manufacturers, factories and much more.

My uniqueness as a commercial lawyer is that I can provide any businessperson, entrepreneur or manager with an especially broad legal perspective that includes their relevant business considerations.

Very few commercial attorneys in Israel can provide my added value. I am not a lawyer who only counseled clients from their air-conditioned offices according to narrow legal issues. For more than 15 years, I have been involved in the day-to-day management of successful business firms and I have a genuine, personal experience in forming business from the ground up, in the daily management of companies and sometimes in business failures that teach you more than anything else could.

Legal advice that concerns forming companies and preparing them for a new business activity or current counseling for an existing business should be comprehensive and account for an entire array of factors and conditions that are not only legal but also commercial, managerial and entrepreneurial, and as the saying goes: “it takes one to know one”.

The legal realm is meticulous, slow and cumbersome, but the business realm is much more vibrant and faster. Business decisions are made practically every day and so the firm’s commercial lawyer has to both excel in law and exhibit great flexibility, open-mindedness, commercial intuition and readiness to provide their clients with practical and sometimes quick solutions.

Manufacturing in Israel is of the highest importance, yet the country’s geographic area, economy and small population force businesses to expand across its borders and export goods or services abroad.

A commercial lawyer in Israel has to be fluent in English, able to draft agreements and instruments in English and understand international agreements from a global commercial perspective.

To broaden my commercial understanding, I did not settle for a merely practical experience from the business real and the commercial legal counseling, and embarked on the way to an Executive MBA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, majoring in integrative management.

The academic commercial depth the MBA provides, alongside the theoretical knowledge necessary to form and manage successful companies and lucrative business models assist me greatly in the legal counseling field and provide my clients with an immense added value.

A lawyer could contribute greatly, since they advise the client towards important decisions and build a conception with them. Every manager wants to hear a legal opinion that is more than a narrow view of the issue at hand.

Managers constantly try and predict the future and prepare for it. Alongside quality business managers are commercial lawyers that aid them in analyzing from a bird’s eye-view the business situation, the potential ramifications each decision will have on the company’s future, the decision’s impact on the company’s stakeholders (vendors, clients, shareholders), and obviously the potential risks and interest balance vis-à-vis the counterparty.

Seasoned businesspersons know it is highly desirable (to say the least) to engage a professional commercial lawyer to provide legal counsel before any business action the company takes.

There are many business actions for which every company will find a professional legal service invaluable, such as: a seemingly simple contract with a third party to promote the company’s website, drafting a collaboration agreement with a foreign strategic partner, ordering new services from a vendor, procuring equipment for the company, explaining officers and directors’ liability insurance policies, writing letters in English, debt collection, handling the offices’ lease agreement, drafting disclaimer clauses for the marketing materials, preparing non-compete and non-disclosure documents for the company’s employees, negotiating with any entity the firm engages, counseling in anything to do with employees, with installing CCTV cameras, with the regulation applicable to the firm, the articles applicable to the company’s website, handling related-party transactions, handling issues with the Registrar of Companies and its reporting obligations, labor law, intellectual property and much more.

All of the above actions are a mere fraction of the work performed by an excellent commercial lawyer who understands businesses and knows what they need to succeed. Do not hesitate to approach adv. Dror Harel to learn more.