If you are wondering why you should choose Watershed as your legal services provider in Somaliland, here is our answer.
Why Use Lawyers?
Risk Reduction – Somaliland has many and varied risks associated with doing business here. You can reduce many of these risks by working with us to analyze your risk profile. Good contracts, agreements, and by-laws can effectively reduce many of the risks which your business faces by negotiating an allocation of the inherent risks between parties before those risks take place and the emotions set in.
Enhanced Certainty – Increasing the certainty which you do have in your business plans goes hand in hand with reducing your risk. You can increase the certainty of your supply chain, customer relationships, and partnerships by working with us to analyze your certainty profile. Good contracts, agreements, and by-laws can effectively enhance the certainty throughout the stream of your business.
Stronger Relationships – Businesses based on family, friend, or clan-based relationships have been extremely effective at allowing Somaliland businessmen to continue to operate. The next step in the development of Somaliland and Somaliland’s business is to reduce the possible fracturing of those relationships by solidifying the agreements in writing to reduce misunderstandings and the emotions when difficulties in your business arise.
Less Stress – As a business owner you have enough to worry about. You have to worry about making your rent payments, making your payroll payments, ensuring your customers are satisfied, and getting your brand onto the marketplace. Let us worry about the difficult things such as government relations, contract building, or property transactions. Doing so will reduce your stress and free up your time to do what you do best: build your business.
Professionalism
When you are searching for a legal services provider, your first concern is that the provider you choose be a true professional. By which we mean reliable, hard-working, transparent, and able to uphold the ethical duties of the profession.
It would be difficult to find a more reliable and hard-working team anywhere than ours. We have not missed a single deadline or time-frame requested by our clients or the courts. Our spotless record we do not intend to sully. We have continually amazed Somalilanders at the amount of work which our team is able to finish. During a previous two year period we provided the Somaliland Government and the Somaliland Parliament with legal analysis on over ninety different areas.
We take our ethical duties extremely seriously, as we will lose our licenses to practice law and our business if we violate then. Even more than that, we feel that the ethical duties which lawyers have are the correct way in which to represent your clients. Although there are many ethical rules and regulations for the practice of law, the three major ones are the duty of care, the duty of loyalty, and the duty of confidentiality. The duty of care requires that we do everything possible to protect your interests or pursue your goals. The duty of loyalty requires that we act only on your behalf and not in a way which would assist your competitor or adversary’s interests. The duty of confidentiality requires that we ensure the confidentiality of the information which you share with us. These ethical duties, among others, are at the core of our professionalism. We talk about them among ourselves often to ensure that we are giving our clients services which aggressively pursue their interests while maintaining the ethical core of our practices.
Experience
Our experience is unparalleled within Somaliland. We have the expertise and experience which your business needs to prosper, whether you are coming into the Somaliland market, seeking to expand abroad, or simply want to increase your revenue through better risk planning.
We were the international legal advisers to the Somaliland Government and both Houses of the Somaliland Parliament. In that capacity our team produced over ninety lengthy memoranda for those entities covering a range of comparative state analysis and international legal matters. We advised the Parliament on everything from banking laws and international finance mechanisms to the new Hargeisa City Charter Law’s comparability with international best practices for capital city management. This knowledge is on top of our prior experiences and our current experiences. Our team’s breadth of experience and interests gives you, as our clients, a huge advantage over your competitors.
We understand your situation, whether you are a Somalilander or an international. As our firm is small, but diverse, so are our backgrounds. This gives us an empathy for a variety of different situations our clients may find themselves in. We have been sued in Somaliland by an angry ex-business associate and we quashed the case at the instance of the first reasonable judge. We know what if feels like to be attacked for things outside your control. We know what it feels like to come into an unknown market for the first time. This understanding is essential to assisting you through your transaction or litigation as it enables us to advise you with a depth that few other organizations within Somaliland can bring.
Our experience, expertise, and understanding can be combined to attain your success. Our success rate in the past shows that we are keenly aware of the particularities of Somaliland’s governance system. We have attained licenses for many different types of entities seeking to come into Somaliland. We have advised many multi-national corporations on the particularities of the Somaliland legislative framework as well as that of Somalia’s culminating in successful transactions.
Resources
It will be difficult for any other firm in Somaliland to match the resources which we have built. We have compiled an almost 100% complete library of every applicable piece of legislation which is currently operative in Somaliland, and most of the legislation which is operative in Somalia also. We are increasing our library of court decisions, executive (both Presidential and Ministerial) decrees, and municipal ordinances every day. Additionally, we have a keen ability, built during our two years as the Somaliland Government’s international legal advisors to research international law and treaties.
During our time together as a team, we have built numerous analysis documents and with each iteration of a new piece of legislation or international mechanism we update these. If you are interested in receiving research and analysis on many different areas of local, regional, or international law please contact us.
Last, and certainly not least, our connection list is about as long as a team of our size can be. We have built contacts throughout each of the main power centers of Somaliland, whether that is within the business community, the governance sector, or the traditional sector. This is how we can help you get things done.
Availability
As a young firm we are able to work in a variety of different ways. We are equally at ease in personal meetings, on the phone, email, and more advanced web 2.0 methods of communication. Not only can we communicate with you in the way which you prefer, but we also make ourselves extremely available to our clients. It will not be difficult to track us down. Neither will it take long for us to respond to your query.
