Verner Keel
Leigh Ellis is a rare gem who understands modern software development and commercial law equally well. This is important for technical people like myself, as it makes communication much easier and less time-consuming. In other words, he understood the core issues without spending much time on the clock charging me to work out the technology involved. He knew how it worked without me having to explain it. To be frank, Leigh started giving me sound advice immediately after my initial email, before I had even engaged his company to help me. That built an enormous amount of trust, as I could see that his replies were laser-focused. My business had a complex technology ownership issue with a customer, as we had worked together for 15 years but had not formalised our relationship, which caused insecurities for both sides regarding who owned what and how to disconnect our services if necessary. Leigh helped me formalise our relationship into a contract and create a structured asset list with a safe handover schedule, which would properly protect both me and my client and ensure continuity and optionality. Leigh pointed out several other aspects of our relationship and helped to formalise those as well. What I additionally liked was that Leigh allowed me to do a lot of the work myself to cut costs, so that a small business like mine would not spiral into a bottomless pit of legal costs. Also, his projection of legal costs was accurate, which I appreciated. Leigh is not cheap, but if you want to tailor a contract that can truly protect both parties and create confidence on both sides, then I recommend investing a few grand more rather than relying on a general template-based contract. When I got the contract, the more I read it, the more I realised that the solution they proposed was quite clever and very smooth. It just made sense. It was the sort of contract that seriously professional businesses use. In many ways, the IT contract they produced increased the authority of my business. The end result was thoughtful, well structured, and protective of my business. They did what needed to be done to get the situation behind us. This is how it should be.