J-Law

The Judicare International Law Firm Network

Helping you to help your clients with their International Legal affairs  

Introduction to Judicare Law International

We are a UK-based, SRA-regulated, and fully insured law firm helping UK personal and business clients to deal with the full range of legal matters in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

We only deal with foreign legal matters – we do not deal with UK legal matters, and as such we do not compete in any way with UK law firms who carry out UK work. In that sense, we are the perfect complement to UK law firms whose clients seek legal expertise of an international nature that they themselves cannot provide.

As the affairs of personal and commercial UK clients take on an increasingly international aspect, the developing and expanding needs of clients might not be within a UK law firm’s current armoury. That’s where we can help. The range of services that your clients might require has broadened but building a full international capability that truly offers “top notch” expertise around the world is simply not something that a UK law firm can readily do. Now you can service these client needs – by working with us - as we offer a range of advantages:

1. Our presence and accessibility in the UK
2. A removal of all language barriers – we and the lawyers we work with around the world all speak English
3. Our own experience and expertise from years of dealing with foreign legal matters
4. The expertise and experience of a select group of trusted, registered, regulated, specialist lawyers and law firms in jurisdictions around the world with whom we have been closely working for over a decade.

In these ways, clients – including your clients – can enjoy the benefits of dealing in the usual way with the UK office of an SRA-regulated law firm and of having real, relevant, and up-to-date expertise “on the ground” in a host of countries. We have long worked with UK law firms to ensure that their clients have access to the international expertise they need.

Where we can work with you and your clients on international work

If your client requires international legal expertise, this can be provided in a range of ways. We are flexible.

For example:

Situation A - where you refer your client to us (or where any of your partners or people themselves need international legal help):

Working with trusted law firms around the world, to clients we are effectively a full-service law firm in every jurisdiction in which we operate, being 15 in number and counting. This means that we can help clients to address almost all issues that may arise from a legal and judicial standpoint, including:

Personal legal matters – non-litigious:

• Assisting clients to buy or sell a property or a parcel of land abroad
• Carrying out, ahead of any potential acquisition, due diligence on a developer, development, or corporate entity in that jurisdiction. We can prepare an in-depth report into an individual and/or a corporate entity.
• Inheritance and Probate work in the foreign jurisdiction where any assets may be located. This covers both contentious and non-contentious legal work.
• Drafting and advising on foreign Wills in the relevant jurisdiction. We can work in conjunction with any UK advisers to ensure coordination with a UK will
• Incorporation and ongoing administration services in relation to foreign limited companies. This may be in order that the company can hold a foreign asset.
• Assisting with Powers of Attorney to authorise actions in the foreign jurisdiction
• Assisting clients with immigration and emigration issues, including visas and residency applications

Personal - Litigation

• Initial review of a file and providing detailed opinion on the merits of advancing a claim in the foreign jurisdiction
• Legal proceedings against a foreign developer for the recovery of an investor’s funds in relation to a failed property project
• Legal proceedings against a foreign lawyer for negligence in relation to property and other projects
• Legal proceedings against foreign banks – for example in relation to the mis selling of foreign currency housing loans.
• Debt collection in a foreign jurisdiction
• Defending proceedings for UK clients brought against them in a foreign jurisdiction

• Foreign divorces

• Cancellation of foreign Timeshare products 

Commercial matters

Should any of the above have a business aspect or a corporate/commercial element, then we could of course accommodate that. In light of the fact that all of our associate firms around the world are full-service, they – and so Judicare – can assist UK clients to deal with a wide range of corporate and commercial legal matters too.

Situation B – where we work in parallel with you and your firm, to help you to give a full service and full protection to your clients (and to your firm) :

• If a UK estate, probate, or inheritance case that you are dealing with has international aspects, we work alongside your lawyers to help with these aspects
• We can assist you with the realisation of assets and repatriation of funds to the UK
• If the UK lawyers are dealing with a debt recovery case and they need support (legal or asset-tracing) we can advise on assets and recovery routes, and we can then procure the required action
• If your firm has obtained a UK judgement, we can help you to enforce it against assets in foreign jurisdictions
• We can help you with cases that you are working on – for example, to procure witness statements, carry out site visits, serve documents and proceedings, etc. 

Our Service Pledge to our – and to your - clients 

We make the Judicare Service Pledge to all clients that we act for:

1. To help you with your international legal matters, we work with law firms and lawyers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East that we know and that we trust.
2. All communications with you about your case are conducted in English
3. We and our associated lawyers are active, not passive.  We push your case.
4. You won’t have to chase us. If anything, we’ll be chasing you.
5. We will keep you updated constantly
6. We will respond promptly to any contact or enquiry that you send in
7. You will always know where your case is up to. We are committed to keeping you informed and updated – even if nothing has happened.
8. For our work and for the work of the foreign lawyers that we involve, all fees are always transparent and are agreed at the outset.
9. If you ever raise any concerns, we will deal with these immediately 

J-Law - The Judicare Network

We’re here if you ever need us. But we go a bit further than that.

J-Law is the informal network or community that we run which is our way of helping law firms to help any of their clients that need assistance with legal issues in foreign jurisdictions. Whilst we are always available if you or a client of yours wants to talk through any international legal matter, we wanted to be more informative and more proactive.

We therefore set up J-Law, which helps you to get to know us better, and which helps us to add value to you, to your lawyers, and to your clients, all on an ongoing basis.

All you need to do is ask us (jlaw@judicaregroup.com) to include you in the briefings, reports, and other communications that we send out, all of which will have an international aspect.

Over and above those briefings etc, we offer a range of benefits to law firms and we make some promises to them that we hope will put your minds at rest should you or a client of yours ever need international legal help that we can supply:   

Benefits of working with us 

• As a UK law firm that doesn’t do any UK law, you will readily see that we are not competing with any law firm who might refer its clients to us. We simply don’t have the expertise that a referred client might look for in the UK in addition to their international need, but we still give an explicit non-poaching confirmation to all law firms by which we promise them that we will not take any steps to generate any work from their clients.
• You will receive our newsletters, briefings, and reports, which you can circulate internally – this will generally raise awareness of international legal matters amongst your lawyers, and it will add to their continuing professional development.
• You can choose to send these newsletters to relevant clients of your firm – they will value the content and your support for their international dimensions
• Your relationship with your client is protected – indeed, enhanced. Not least of all, every client that we act for benefits from the Service Pledge which all of our associated firms around the world embrace.
• Your lawyers or your clients can call our UK-based team to talk through (free of charge) any issue or challenge they are facing that requires international expertise.
• Your Professional Indemnity Insurance is protected - the risk to your claims record by you carrying out work with an international dimension is removed as you can instead rely on our expertise and on our PII.
• We offer free webinars on general and specific international legal subjects which all support your lawyers’ abilities to look after their clients and to alert them to situations where you can add value to your clients, but where external expertise might be required. Your clients will of course thank you for alerts that you raise.
• Access to our resources and guides on topics such as buying property around the world, inheritance issues around the world, etc. These are available to your lawyers and your clients.
• It goes without saying that, as has happened on many occasions, any of your partners or people who want to buy a home abroad or deal with any foreign legal matters will be well looked after. 

The Promise we make to law firms that refer their clients to us

In addition to the promise we make to every client that we act for (in our Service Pledge), we also make the following promises to law firms that refer their clients to us:

1. Put simply, we will deal with your client’s matter professionally and promptly. We genuinely care.
2. We will look after your client in exactly the same way that we look after our own, fully in line with the Judicare Service Pledge.
3. As soon as you need our input, we will respond promptly to you or to your client
4. We (and a relevant senior foreign lawyer that we bring into the case) will respond straight away, and this will include where relevant a first, no-obligation initial call at no charge
5. Obviously subject to client consent, we will keep you posted every step of the way if you want that
6. Whether it is a case that can be progressed or not, we will give your client certainty, and without delay.
7. It may be that we can (or need to) help your client in an alternative way by signposting them to a relevant source or party, and we will happily do that.

8. We promise not to try to generate any further work for our firm from your clients 

In summary…

Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can help you to help a client of yours.

If you want to receive the newsletters, briefings, reports, and training that we provide, just email us at jlaw@judicaregroup.com and ask for your name to be added to our mailing list. You can remove your name from that list at any time just by emailing us and asking to unsubscribe.

We look forward to working with you, and to helping you to help your clients.

THE JUDICARE TEAM