Commercial disputes
Contract claims, shareholder disputes and arbitration, from the first demand letter through to enforcement. Around half settle before a hearing, which is usually the better result.
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Jakarta & Surabaya · Since 1998
We will tell you when not to sue.
Commercial disputes, employment, property and corporate advisory. Our rates are published, our first meeting has a fixed price, and roughly one enquiry in five leaves that meeting advised to settle rather than to litigate.
28 yearsContinuous practice
14 lawyersFour partners, ten associates
Rp 750.000First meeting, credited if you instruct us
1 dayTo a conflict-check answer
Where does your matter go?
Tell us the situation and we will tell you the department, the timeline and the cost of the first meeting.
This is orientation, not advice. It exists because the most common reason people delay calling a lawyer is not knowing which kind of lawyer they need or what the first conversation will cost.
If none of these fit, use the form on the contact page and describe it in your own words. Somebody reads every one of them.
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Typical duration—
How it is usually charged—
First meeting—
Bring to the first meeting
Sending this does not make you our client. We run a conflict check first and reply either way within one working day.
Practice areas
Six things we do, and nothing else.
A firm of fourteen cannot be good at twenty things. What is not on this list, we refer out — and we will tell you who, without taking a fee for the introduction.
Employment
Both sides of the table: advising employers on process and representing employees who have been through a bad one. We do not act for both in the same industry sector at the same time.
Read more →Property & land
Due diligence before purchase, certificate defects, boundary disputes and developer failures. The due diligence is where the money is saved and it is priced as a fixed fee.
Read more →Corporate advisory
Incorporation, shareholders' agreements, funding rounds, restructuring and sale. Priced per deliverable so a company knows the cost of a document before it exists.
Read more →Debt recovery
A fixed fee per demand letter, and an honest assessment of whether the debtor can pay at all before you spend anything chasing them.
Read more →Family & inheritance
Divorce, estates and inheritance disputes, handled with the assumption that the parties will still have to see each other at weddings for the next thirty years.
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What we say out loud
Four things most firms leave for you to find out later.
- Litigation in Indonesia takes longer than anyone tells you at the first meeting. Eight months is fast. Two years is normal.
- Winning a judgment and collecting on it are different problems. We assess the second one before you spend money on the first.
- Our fees are hourly for disputes because nobody can honestly fix-price a case whose length depends on the other side. Everything we can fix-price, we do.
- If the cost of running your case will exceed what you can realistically recover, we will say so in the first meeting and charge you Rp 750.000 for the privilege.
“They talked us out of a claim we had already decided to bring. Their invoice for that meeting was seven hundred and fifty thousand rupiah. The claim would have cost us two hundred million and we would have lost.”
Managing director, logistics company · Jakarta, 2024
Working with us
Four stages, and you can stop at the first.
Stage one
Conflict check
Before anything else, and before you tell us anything confidential. One working day, and if we are conflicted we say so and name two firms who are not.
Stage two
First meeting
Ninety minutes, Rp 750.000, and you leave with a written summary of your position and your options — including the option of doing nothing.
Stage three
Engagement letter
The scope, the fee basis, who does the work and at what rate, and an estimate for the first phase. Nothing starts before you have signed it.
Stage four
Monthly billing
Itemised by task and by fee-earner, sent monthly whether or not you ask. No bill ever arrives at the end of a case as a surprise.
Recent matters
Anonymised, and including the ones we lost.
Client identities are confidential and stay that way. What is not confidential is how a case ended.
Contract claim, freight forwarding
Rp 8,4 miliar claimed. Settled at mediation in the eleventh week for Rp 5,1 miliar, paid in three instalments.
Settled
Unfair dismissal, 22 employees
Acted for the employees. Fourteen months to a decision at the industrial court, followed by seven more to enforce it.
Won, slowly
Land certificate defect, Bekasi
Overlapping certificates on 4.200 m². Our client's title was the weaker one and we advised settlement early rather than a three-year fight.
Settled at a loss
Shareholder deadlock, technology company
Two founders, 50/50, no deadlock clause. Nine months to a negotiated buy-out that neither shareholder was happy with, which is usually the sign of a fair one.
Resolved
Debt recovery, distribution
Rp 1,9 miliar across nineteen invoices. The debtor was insolvent by the time we were instructed and we recovered nothing. We told the client that was likely before we started.
Not recovered
Start here
The first meeting costs Rp 750.000 and is credited if you instruct us.
Ninety minutes with a partner, not an associate. You leave with a written summary you can take to another firm if you would rather. About one in five of these meetings ends with us advising against a claim.