'10 Minute Tip' by Karen Mason
Karen has been delivering useful, practical, high quality legal advice to clients in Milton Keynes and beyond for over 20 years.
Whether an in-house lawyer or working via a private practice, Karen's view is that a solicitor should be providing high value as an integral part of the business team. It was Karen’s experience, gained during the early days of the internet and the IT revolution - in media companies and later as a senior partner in solicitors’ practices - that led her to set up Novalex.
Karen's vision, to use information technology to best advantage, is what enables Novalex lawyers to deliver the highest quality commercial legal services to businesses and charities at the best possible prices.Karen specialises in:
IT procurement and supplySoftware and maintenanceWeb site terms and conditions, privacy policies and complianceSoftware development and distributionWeb design, hosting, content and linking. Advice on developing, protecting and exploiting intellectual propertyAgency and distributionJoint venture and collaboration contractsFranchise agreementsManufacturing contractsTerms and conditions and bespoke agreementsConfidentiality and non-disclosureData protection compliance.
About the conversation:
Why growing your business is a game of Snakes & Ladders
Find out how to kill the snakes, climb the ladders and grow your business securely with Milton Keynes Top Commercial lawyer Karen Mason at the Business Growth Club MK Friday July 22nd 7:15 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.
In this presentation, Karen Mason from Milton Keynes based Novalex Solicitors likens the growth of a business to a game of snakes and ladders.
The snakes
The snakes are the challenges that can drag the business down.
· late payment by major customers who have insisted on their own terms of business
· claims of intellectual property infringement
· data protection issues
· other people counterfeiting the business’s products or copying its websites
· defamation and…
· worst of all, litigation.
The ladders
The ladders are the contracts that will protect the business, ensuring, among other things, that…
· payments are made on time
· intellectual property is retained where appropriate
· personal data is dealt with appropriately
· any disputes are dealt with through effective mediation rather than through the courts.
Karen will talk through some real life examples of “snakes” she has encountered and how they have been dealt with. Karen will also be giving some pointers as to how to put in place “ladders” in a time and cost effective manner without getting into a “battle of the forms” or plagiarising those of another business and opening yourself up to a claim of copyright infringement!
Karen Mason trained and, in 1993, qualified as a solicitor with international law firm, Clifford Chance. Since commercial use of the internet began to develop in the 1990s, she has been working at the forefront of the fast-evolving legal frameworks which impact on the use of the internet by individuals and organisations.
She was a contributing author of
“A Practitioner’s Guide To The Regulation Of The Internet” published in 2001.
During a career spanning over 20 years Karen has worked closely with a whole range of businesses and charities from the BBC and Demon Internet in London to Lynx Networks and Worktree in Milton Keynes.
Karen founded Novalex Solicitors in 2008. Having spent half her career in house and half her career working in private practice, Karen felt that the structure of a traditional law firm did not provide the best service to clients. So Karen set about creating a different kind of law firm which put the client’s needs first.
Since then Karen has continued to work closely with companies of all sizes, from start-ups to PLCs, advising them how to avoid potential legal pitfalls and helping them to negotiate contracts that are good for their businesses.
