III. When you will need one Standing Counselor and our charge rate
If you have some quantity Chinese vendors (suppliers) in China, for example, more than five vendors in China or each year you placed more than five purchase orders in China, then a standing counselor (legal advisor) engagement agreement will be good choice for you, with affordable annual fee of several thousand USD only.
Our now present charge rate is XXX (please consult with our lawyer for our charge, not for public) each year. Different opponent’s name defines the difference of the cases; but different cases arise from one purchase order will be considered as one case. For example, you want to sign two contracts with two different forwarders, one is an inland forward company, another one is a sea forwarding company, then these are two different cases; another example, to sign one purchase order, you need to verify two companies, and sign one contract with them, and these jobs all together could be one case.
IV. Why you will need one Standing Counselor in China
Our team had about 20 years’ experience of practicing transnational disputes, and a big part of our cases were disputes aroused from international sales/purchase agreement of cargos and services. Abstract from our before experiences, we think you will need one Standing Counselor for below reasons:
1. Some vendor is an obviously high-risk one, or even a scammer. You may ever hear of all kind of the scamming cases in international trade in China, for example, chemical product fraud cases in north China; Putian scammers who sell iPhone but send clients a pair of shoes finally; big-order scam cases in south China, and so on.
2. Some vendors are actually not a company registered in mainland China, but an off-shore company who looks like a Chinese company, when dispute arouse, sometimes you do not even know where to file a case. And most off-shore companies has no much properties in mainland China, so they are also high-risk business partners.
3. Some vendors are actually trading company, but they told you they are a manufacturer, and they play a good show to you. Of course you can get even better price from a manufacturer than a trading company.
4. You have dispute with your vendors, but you did not have a well-drafted agreement, then you will have to pay your own lawyer’s charge. This seems to be unreasonable but this is the present laws in China, only in ten type of cases, the wining party can ask the losing party of a litigation case, to pay the winning party’s lawyer’s charge, for rest cases, the winning party has to pay their own lawyer’ charge, even they win the litigation case.
5. And more….
And you can resolve above problems with a Standing Counselor in China.
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