Shareholder Disputes · Sydney & NSW
Frozen out of your own company, starved of dividends, or dealing with a co-owner who has stopped acting in the company interest? You get a NSW solicitor with Supreme Court experience building the strategy, and AI reading the company record so the leverage is found early and the costs stay proportionate to the shares in dispute.
Is this you?
Most shareholder disputes do not begin as legal disputes. They begin as a series of decisions that quietly move value away from one owner. The earlier the pattern is documented, the stronger your position becomes.
Any of these apply? A thirty minute consultation costs nothing and will tell you what your real position is. Call 0480 893 317 or request a call back.
Scope of work
These matters are about leverage long before they are about litigation. We build the evidence position first, then use it to drive the commercial outcome you actually want.
Time critical
Shareholder disputes reward the party who moves first with a documented case. Delay is rarely neutral, because the party in control of the company is usually the party in control of the record.
If you are being excluded, your access to accounts, email and minutes can disappear overnight. Documents should be secured before the other side knows you are taking advice.
A share issue, an asset sale or a new related party arrangement is far harder to unwind than to restrain. Acting before it completes is always the cheaper path.
Oppression is proved by a course of conduct. Contemporaneous records of each incident are worth considerably more than a reconstruction two years later.
Claims for breach of duty and for recovery of company property carry limitation periods. Older conduct can fall out of reach while you are still negotiating.
Lawyer-led, AI-assisted
Oppression cases are won on the paper trail. Years of board minutes, ledgers, bank statements and email threads have to be assembled into a pattern a court will recognise. Traditionally that work is the single largest line on the bill.
Thousands of pages of company records are scanned in a single pass to map payments, transfers and decisions into a timeline your solicitor can act on immediately.
Identifying the strongest three incidents early is usually what produces a settlement, and it avoids paying for a contested hearing to make the same point.
Strategy, negotiation and advocacy stay with a senior lawyer. The document mountain does not get billed at senior rates.
Typical task times, Law Flow compared with a traditional firm
| Task | Other firms | Law Flow | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract review | 4 to 6 hrs | 30 to 45 mins | ~80% |
| Legal research | 10+ hrs | 2 hrs | ~80% |
| Initial drafting | 2 to 3 hrs + | 30 mins or less | ~75% |
Law Flow runs with low staff and office overheads, using AI in place of junior employees and virtual meeting spaces instead of commercial offices. The savings are passed on to you. Figures are indicative and vary with the matter.
Tell us what you are dealing with and you will get a scope and a price for the next step, not an hourly estimate.
Book A ConsultationHow it works
Thirty minutes with Tristan, not an intake officer. You explain the situation, he tells you where you stand and what the deadlines are.
You get a written scope and a price for the next stage before any work starts. No open-ended retainer, no surprise invoices.
The documents, ledgers and authorities are processed at speed, then reviewed by your solicitor. This is the stage traditional firms bill hardest.
Advice, negotiation, drafting and advocacy are done by the lawyer with carriage of your file, and you deal with him directly throughout.
Cost
The commercial reality of a shareholder dispute is that legal costs can swallow the value in the shares. We scope in stages, and we say plainly when litigation is not worth running.
Thirty minutes to test whether you have an oppression case and what a realistic exit looks like.
Initial strategy, records review and the letter of demand are commonly quoted as a fixed fee.
If court becomes necessary, each stage is quoted separately so spend never runs ahead of the value in dispute.
Your lawyer
Tristan Burt
Principal Solicitor
Tristan is the person who listens to your situation, understands your goals and builds the strategy. He is a NSW registered solicitor with years of experience from top-tier firms across Australia, Asia and Europe, and has built Law Flow’s AI systems to amplify his judgement, not replace it. He is the ultimate decision maker on your matter.
Common questions
Conduct that is contrary to the interests of the members as a whole, or oppressive to, unfairly prejudicial to, or unfairly discriminatory against a member. In practice it looks like exclusion from management, dividend starvation while salaries rise, denial of information, diversion of company opportunities, and share issues designed to dilute. It is generally a course of conduct rather than a single act.
A court can order that your shares be bought out at a value it considers fair, and that is the most common remedy in an oppression case. The practical work sits in establishing the conduct and then in the valuation, which is where these disputes are usually really fought.
Shareholders can apply under section 247A of the Corporations Act for a court order to inspect the books, and directors have their own inspection rights. A refusal to provide information is also evidence in its own right in an oppression claim.
Most shareholder disputes settle. Court is leverage rather than the destination. Our aim is to build a position strong enough that a commercial resolution becomes the sensible option for the other side, while being genuinely ready to run it if it is not.
Yes. Law Flow uses AI through business grade services under terms where client prompts, documents and outputs are not used to train or improve AI services. We add lawyer review, access controls, redaction tooling and restrictions on what can be submitted, consistent with the Law Society of NSW Statement on the Use of AI in Australian Legal Practice.
Next step
Thirty minutes with the solicitor who would run your matter. Bring the shareholders agreement and the last two years of accounts, and you will leave the call with a clear view of your position.
