When Your Client Needs More Than Numbers: The Case for Early Legal Advice
There’s a moment most professional advisers recognise. A client raises something that sits just outside the financial brief – a contract they’re about to sign, a business partnership that’s starting to feel uncertain, or a Will they haven’t updated since the business looked very different. They’re raising it because they trust you. But the question is a legal one.
How that moment is handled and how quickly the client gets the right advice often determines whether a manageable situation stays that way.
Sam Cohen is the Principal Lawyer at Cohen Legal in Townsville. Her practice spans litigation and commercial law, and she has spent her career working at both ends of the legal process – advising clients before problems arise, and representing them when disputes reach court. She came to law at 40, after years working in business administration and construction management. That background shapes how she thinks about risk and how she talks to clients who are running businesses, not studying law.
“There are some benefits to my life experience, absolutely. It makes it so much easier to talk to people and relate to them.” — Sam Cohen, Principal Lawyer, Cohen Legal
Her view on the timing of legal advice is direct: early is almost always better, and waiting almost always costs more.
The First Call Is Usually to the Accountant
Accountants occupy a particular position in their clients’ professional lives. The relationship is built over years, across financial cycles, and through significant business decisions. Clients share information with their accountant that they share with almost nobody else and that trust naturally extends beyond the purely financial.
It is not unusual for questions about business agreements, ownership structures, or estate planning to surface in the context of a tax or financial review. These questions arise organically. They are not a sign that the client is confused about who does what. They are a sign that the adviser relationship is a genuine one.
The practical question is what happens next. Legal questions carry legal consequences, and the advice that shapes a client’s decision needs to come from someone trained to assess that specific kind of risk.
“Accountants are very good at numbers, whereas lawyers focus on the risk.” — Sam Cohen
That distinction is not about professional territory. It is about what each discipline is actually equipped to do. And part of what makes legal advice valuable is knowing where to look — the things you can only find if you know they exist.
“You have to know that stuff exists to know to ask for it.” — Sam Cohen
That instinct, honed across years in litigation and built on genuine business experience, is what separates reactive legal advice from the kind that actually prevents disputes.
Where the Numbers End and the Risk Begins
The overlap between financial and legal advice is real, and it creates genuine ambiguity for clients. Tax structures and business structures intersect. Financial planning and estate planning sit alongside each other. But there are specific territories where legal input is not optional and where well-intentioned financial advice cannot substitute for it.
The agreements most business owners don’t have
Many business owners operating in partnership or with co-shareholders are doing so without current, properly drafted agreements. Partnership agreements, shareholders agreements, and buy-sell agreements are the legal foundation of any multi-owner business. They define how decisions are made, how profits are distributed, how someone exits, and what happens when circumstances change in ways nobody anticipated.
Sam’s experience is that the absence of these documents is more common than most clients would admit. And the moment when a business is performing well is precisely the right time to address it.
“It’s an agreed set of rules. This is how we’re going to conduct ourselves in the event that this happens — and we all agree on it. Before it happens.”— Sam Cohen
The tax review conversation, when the numbers are positive and the client is already thinking about structure, is the natural prompt to also ask whether the legal documents are still fit for purpose. The two questions belong together.
The Will that doesn’t deal with the business
For sole traders, sole directors, and partners in professional practices, estate planning and legal advice are inseparable. A Will that does not specifically address business interests or that conflicts with existing business agreements can create serious complications for beneficiaries who have no knowledge of how the business operates.
Sam frames it plainly:
“What happens if you are the guiding mind of a business? So you’re the sole director and you’ve got a business and you unfortunately passed away unexpectedly. You leave that with your beneficiaries. Maybe they don’t have a clue.”— Sam Cohen
Having a Will that deals specifically with the business – who takes over, how it is wound down or sold, who is authorised to act – gives beneficiaries a framework at the worst possible time. Without one, the consequences fall on people who are already grieving and may have no idea where to start.
Sam works with clients to ensure their Will and business agreements are complementary, not contradictory. If a client has a business and the Will hasn’t been reviewed since the ownership structure changed, that gap needs closing.
“It’s called succession planning and business structuring, and it all needs to be looked at as a whole. Otherwise, you can end up with conflicts.”— Sam Cohen
What Early Legal Advice Actually Prevents
The cost of legal advice at the right time is almost always a fraction of the cost of managing the consequences when it arrives too late. Sam sees the full spectrum in practice and the pattern across disputes that could have been avoided is consistent.
A farming family without a partnership agreement found one brother drawn into the other’s divorce proceedings when the business became a marital asset.
A 50% shareholder who never had a shareholders agreement spent years building a company, only to discover revenue had been systematically moved to a separate entity. Legal costs to resolve the matter reached $160,000.
Two colleagues who bought a business together with nothing in writing had no agreed mechanism when one of them wanted to exit no exit terms, no dispute resolution clause, nothing. As Sam puts it: it really is in the wind.
None of these situations involved dishonest people or poorly run businesses at the outset. They involved the absence of documented rules — rules that would have been straightforward and affordable to put in place at the start.
“They’re not cheap. But if you’re making money, they’re cheaper. Let’s put it this way, they’re cheaper than litigating when it’s all over.”
— Sam Cohen
The detailed scenarios are covered in: What Happens with No Business Agreement
Tax Time as a Legal Prompt — A Practical Framework
One of the most useful things a professional adviser can do is normalise the legal review conversation and the annual financial review provides the cleanest opening.
When a business is performing and the conversation turns to tax planning, the client is already thinking about structure, ownership, and future direction. That is the moment when a legal review is most likely to be acted on and when the cost of putting things in order is at its most manageable.
“I wouldn’t suggest that you need to look at it every year, but you certainly should look at it every couple of years.
Is it still suitable for you?
Has anybody’s circumstances changed?
Are you considering bringing in more equity in the form of another partner or perhaps another shareholder?” — Sam Cohen
And before any change to the ownership structure, a legal review is not optional:
“If you are considering bringing in an equity partner — whether it be a partner or a shareholder, it doesn’t matter — then you should review your documents before you do that. Because if you change them beforehand, they’re already in place when you bring somebody else in.”— Sam Cohen
The triggers worth noting:
- No partnership or shareholders agreement in place, or one not reviewed in more than two years
- A new equity partner or shareholder being considered
- A co-owner going through a divorce, financial difficulty, or serious illness
- A Will that predates the current business structure or ownership arrangements
- A commercial contract about to be signed without legal review
- Any sign of tension or misalignment between business owners
These are not hypothetical risks. They are the scenarios that generate disputes and the situations where early legal advice makes the clearest difference to outcomes.
Why a Litigation Firm Thinks Differently About Commercial Advice
Cohen Legal’s identity is specific: it is a litigation firm that also does commercial work. That distinction shapes the quality of the commercial advice clients receive.
When Sam drafts a business agreement or reviews a contract, she does so as a litigator, someone who has seen where documents fail under pressure, and who drafts with those failure points in mind. The agreements her firm produces are designed not just to reflect current intentions, but to anticipate the scenarios that cause disputes.
“A commercial lawyer will draft you a contract. A litigator will tell you what happens when that contract breaks down.”— Sam Cohen
Sam’s business background — years in construction administration, project management, running offices across multiple industries and small business operator — is not incidental to that approach. It means she understands how businesses actually operate, the pressures that lead people to cut corners on documentation, and the moments when a client most needs someone who can see around the corner.
“I see the horror at the end.”— Sam Cohen
That perspective, knowing what disputes look like before they start, is what makes early legal advice from a litigator genuinely different from a standard contract review.
Two Disciplines, One Complete Picture
The most well-protected businesses tend to have two things in common: a good accountant and a good lawyer working from aligned information. Financial advice and legal advice serve different but complementary purposes – the numbers tell you where the business is; the legal documents determine what happens when circumstances test it.
“When accountants and lawyers work together they provide a holistic approach to business risk mitigation.”— Sam Cohen
Cohen Legal works with business owners across Townsville, Mt Isa, and North Queensland on the legal side of that equation — agreements, contracts, succession planning, and when necessary, disputes. If a client’s legal documents haven’t kept pace with their business, getting clear advice early is almost always the better option.
Explore Cohen Legal’s practice areas: cohenlegal.com.au/areas-of-law | Contact Cohen Legal: cohenlegal.com.au
Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not constitute legal advice. You should obtain advice specific to your circumstances before making any decisions.