Real estate advisory

Write advice a client can hand to their lawyer.

Independent real estate advisors help companies decide whether to stay, move, or renegotiate. The proposal should separate your advice from legal representation, name the premises, and state the decision the work is meant to support.

Advice a lawyer can read

Name the building, the lease event, and the decision. Stay and renew. Move to a shortlist of three. Renegotiate the break. A proposal about 'workplace strategy' with no premises in it is a research project, and the clock on a break clause will not wait for it.

Write the dates that already exist. The break notice date. The lease expiry. The date the landlord asked for an answer. Your timeline has to land before the earliest of those, with enough margin for their lawyer to read what you produce.

You are not their counsel

Say that a lawyer reviews the documents and that you will not give a legal opinion. Say whether a surveyor, a planner, or a workplace designer is inside your fee. Real estate advice overruns when the client hears 'we will handle the move' and you meant 'we will recommend whether to move'.

The deliverable is a recommendation with the costs you could verify: rent, an estimate of fit-out if a mover gave you one, the operational cost of staying. Label estimates as estimates. A false precision on fit-out is how these proposals come back to haunt you.