Marcus RichardsAt the time of any legal affair, we start looking for a specialist solicitor who can help in resolving the issue as soon as possible. It is always better to hire a law firm if your work is serious and you want professional work only. However, searching for a firm is very difficult if you don’t have sufficient knowledge about the legal terms.
Here, we are going to discuss boutique law firms, a special kind of law firm that might have confused you by its name. These law firms usually have less number of solicitors working in the office, but all of them will be fully trained and experienced in their work. Mostly, they have more hands-on experience with the clients than any large big law corporation. The main work of boutique law firms is to resolve cases related to the corporate world, like insolvency, commercial disputes, winding-up, and many more.
If you are looking for a law firm to handle your business disputes, boutique law firms are the best option to hire. They have experienced insolvency solicitors in their law firms who can help their clients in resolving their conflicts with insolvent debtors. Similarly, they have specialized solicitors to help creditors in signing wind-up petitions. Boutique law firms practice in a specific area to give desired results to their clients. Let’s get to know more about boutique law firms.
What Is A Boutique Law Firm?
Boutique law firms basically mean a small law firm where only 5 to 20 members work, including all the solicitors and legal clerks. The main idea of working in a small team is to specialize in one or two niche practices only.
This makes the staff expert in a particular field by working on similar cases every day, instead of working on different legal matters like normal law firms. The attorneys in these law firms get more experience over time in their specialized fields.
Types Of Boutique Law Firms
As we have discussed above, boutique law firms specialize in particular areas, which can help us in classifying them easily. There are multiple types on which we can classify boutique law firms based on their expertise. The following are the main types of boutique law firms:
Intellectual Property
This category includes all the practices concerned with intellectual property law, like copyright, trademarks, and patents. This category also involves the licensing and regulation of intellectual property. All the boutique lawyers only work on the legal affairs related to the intellectual property only.
Corporate Frauds
Corporate fraud is a vast category. In this, the members primarily focus on the cases related to money laundering, tax evasion, corruption, and bribery inside an organization. They also deal in cases related to asset misappropriation, insolvency, and many more.
Employment Conflicts
It is normal to observe conflicts in any organization between the employer and employee. To resolve the issues concerned with employment conflicts, you will have to contact boutique law firms that specialize in cases related to overtime, minimum wages, compensation, harassment or discrimination within the organization, etc.
Litigation
The focus of litigation firms ranges from civil cases to criminal cases. Cases like divorce, contract disputes, liability litigation, family law disputes, personal injury claims, and more fall under the litigation firms only.
Tax
As the name suggests, firms that specialize in entities, corporations, and tax laws of individuals are all handled by law firms that focus on tax law. The attorneys that work in a tax law firm mainly specialize in export tax, business tax, income tax, and property tax.
Venture Capital and Technology
Many boutique law firms provide advice and legal services related to fundraising, intellectual rights, liquidation, and tax issues, to firms working in venture capital. This category is beneficial for technology firms as well.
Features Of Boutique Law Firms
As we have already introduced, a boutique law firm is a small firm that offers specialization in a particular practice area. These firms consist of several experienced attorneys. And the following are some other features of a boutique law firm:
Staff With Few Members
Generally, a law firm has very few members of staff. The number of staff does not usually exceed the count of 20. As the team of a boutique law firm is small, it is made up of law clerks, paralegals, and attorneys only. Unlike bigger law firms, administrative firms are not a part of a boutique law firm, and every attorney works with each case at a personal level.
Specialization In An Area
The best part about boutique law firms is that they practice in a single area to become specialists in that. Every solicitor gains specialized experience in dealing with customers while working in boutique law firms which makes them different from general law firms.
Boutique law firms are different from full-service law firms as they offer specialization in a particular area. For instance, if a boutique law firm specializes in criminal law, then they would offer assistance in cases like business crime, money laundering and sanctions, corruption and bribery, and other such legal areas. Their specialization is simply based on the respective practice area.
Lawyers With Experience
Usually, law firms hire lawyers at the starting point of their careers, and they gain experience through their journey in the firm. However, it is not the same with small boutique firms. Lawyers available at a boutique law firm have already gained specialization in the particular area, and they have all the necessary knowledge. These lawyers have already worked for the larger law firms and gained experience, and then became part of the boutique law firm.
Concentrated Client Base
As we have already mentioned the features of boutique law firms, these features are the basic reason why these firms have a concentrated client base that is smaller in number. Because of the specialization offered by these firms, every client might not be relevant to them. Moreover, it is relevant for the few staff members to work with few and selective clients.
Conclusion
We hope that you find the article helpful in making your decision on whether hiring a boutique law firm is beneficial or not. As we have already discussed, boutique firms are smaller and more specialized than general law firms and have a wide range of services to provide but can not assure the quality of services that they provide.
