When you need a consultant and when you need a legal practitioner

People regularly bring us matters that belong with a registered legal practitioner, and just as regularly pay a legal practitioner for work that did not need one. Both are expensive mistakes. The line between the two roles is not complicated once it is drawn.

What only a legal practitioner can do

In Zimbabwe, legal practice is a regulated profession. A registered legal practitioner is the person who:

• gives you a legal opinion on your rights and obligations;
• represents you in court, in arbitration or before a tribunal;
• prepares the documents that, by law, only a practitioner may prepare;
• acts for you in conveyancing and in the transfer of immovable property;
• handles money held in trust on your behalf.

If your matter involves any of those, that is where it belongs, and anyone who tells you otherwise is doing you harm. A consultancy cannot substitute for it, and this one does not try.

What a consultant does

The consultant’s work sits on the commercial side of the same transaction, and it mostly happens earlier.

A legal practitioner can tell you whether a clause is enforceable. A consultant helps you work out whether the deal is worth doing, what the clause will cost you in practice, what to ask for instead, and whether the business across the table can actually deliver. That is a question of commercial judgement, information and preparation rather than of law.

In practice that means:

• reading an agreement with you and explaining in plain language what it obliges you to do, what it costs, and when;
• working out your position before a negotiation: your must-haves, your trade-ables, your walk-away point;
• checking the facts — registration, authority, financials, dependencies — before you commit money;
• looking at how the business itself is structured, priced and run;
• mapping the compliance obligations that apply to you and building a calendar so they stop being discovered late.

A rough test

Ask yourself what you actually need in the next two weeks.

You need a legal practitioner if you need to know whether something is lawful or enforceable, if there is a dispute heading for a court or tribunal, if property is being transferred, if a document must be drawn by a practitioner, or if someone has to hold money on your behalf.

A consultant is the better first call if you need to understand what a document means before you decide, if you need to prepare for a negotiation, if you need to verify that a business or person is what they claim, if you need the commercial terms benchmarked, or if you simply do not yet know whether you have a problem.

You may need both, in sequence. Understanding the deal, negotiating it and checking the other party comes first. Having the final document drawn or reviewed for enforceability comes after. Done in that order, the practitioner’s time is spent on the part that needs a practitioner, which usually costs less overall.

Why the distinction is worth protecting

Clarity about the boundary protects you more than it protects us.

When a consultancy blurs the line and offers something that sounds like legal advice, the client is the one left exposed: relying on an opinion from someone not qualified or insured to give it, in a matter where being wrong has consequences. A consultancy that is open about where its work stops is a consultancy that will tell you when to go elsewhere — which is the more useful quality in an adviser.

This note is general information, not advice on your situation, and it is not legal advice. If you are not sure which of the two you need, ask us — saying so is free, including when the answer is that you need a legal practitioner.