Heaney: Nothing else in the market like this
An alternative business structure set up by an ex-Premier League footballer has launched a network to provide UK law firms with access to “trusted” legal advice from lawyers in other countries.
Neil Heaney, chief executive of alternative business structure Judicare Law International, said he was talking to UK-based law firm networks as well as individual law firms about joining J-Law.
Judicare, which launched a law firm in 2016, only handles work that has an international dimension and the J-Law network aims to work with law firms that have clients who need international advice but do not have the ability to service them.
Mr Heaney said the idea for Judicare came from his own experience of an investment 20 years ago in an off-plan property on the Costa del Sol which went wrong and finding “there was nobody really who could help me”.
Since then, he said the Hertfordshire-based business had helped thousands of people with foreign law matters.
Through J-Law, UK law firms can either keep their clients and obtain advice from a foreign lawyer for a fee or transfer the client to J-Law and receive a referral fee.
“The main thing for us is to let everyone know that there is this network that they can plug into,” Mr Heaney said. “We do not see anything else similar to this in the market.”
He said around 30% of Judicare’s work had been in Spain, advising people buying property or when investments went wrong.
Unlike other countries, where Judicare worked with a single law firm, in Spain it worked with four or five. Elsewhere in Europe, which accounted for 90% of its work, Mr Heaney said Judicare had handled “hundreds and hundreds of matters” in Cyprus.
Other countries where Judicare has worked include Barbados, the Cape Verde islands, Morocco and Dubai.
Mr Heaney, a non-lawyer, is director and sole owner of Judicare. His fellow director is Peter Esders, a solicitor. There are two administrative staff at the firm’s office in Welwyn.
Mr Heaney said he had held discussions with UK law firm networks about having “an international element” which they currently lacked and could add value for their clients.
“The conversations we’ve had have been really encouraging. Small law firms with 10 partners or fewer don’t have international capacity and there is no trusted network they can plug into.
“They can now plug into us if any of their clients, or the partners themselves, want to buy property abroad.”
Mr Heaney said another common need for advice might be a probate matter with one or more foreign assets.
Alternatively, a client might need advice on the prospects of success of litigation over a foreign property or debt collection abroad, or where they were in dispute with a foreign entity, such as a bank.
Where a foreign property transaction had happened and had gone wrong, advice could be given “to try and unpick it”.
His own view of Judicare was not as a small firm, but “a large firm made out of foreign lawyers”.
Solicitor Simon McCrum, a legal sector management consultant who launched Pannone’s law firm referral network Connect2Law, is working with J-Law.
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