Emma Leys

Emma has over 25 years’ experience practising in the areas of non-contentious property, finance, corporate, commercial and local government law, with a focus on property law. Emma acts for a broad range of private, corporate, institutional, local government, State Government department, and statutory corporation clients. Emma joined Kott Gunning in 1999, became a partner in 2005 and since then has been section head of our Property and Commercial team. From March 2019 to March 2020 Emma was the Managing Partner of the firm. Emma’s experience includes:

• Negotiating, drafting, interpreting and advising on commercial and retail leases, including leases for a number of central business district buildings and various shopping centres, retail complexes, office buildings, industrial sites, and telecommunications infrastructure – for both freehold land and Crown Land.
• Negotiating, preparing and advising on contracts for the sale or purchase of businesses, assets and equipment, land and large commercial properties, undertaking due diligence on such transactions and acting on the settlement.
• Advising on and preparing contracts for sale or purchase of land, land exchange, access agreements, easements, restrictive covenants, development deeds, land management contracts, caveats and related documents and contracts generally.
• Acting for Local Governments (metropolitan and regional) on a range of property matters including: sale and purchase of property on complex transactions, leasing and licensing of land and buildings (to both not-for-profit organisations and commercial tenants), management agreements and development deeds.
• Advising on and preparing documents required for the compulsory acquisition of land or adverse possession of land.
• Negotiating, drafting, preparing and advising on general commercial contracts across a broad range of matters, and all property, Landgate and finance/security related documents.
• Banking and finance experience (including acting for credit unions, rural lenders and private lenders) providing advice, documenting lending transactions, conveyancing, personal property securities, and advising/acting on defaults and debt recovery (including conveyancing for mortgagee in possession sales), including advising on security arrangements and Personal Property Securities Act.
• Advising on all legislation relevant to property or commercial matters.

Preparing pro-forma documents and boilerplate provisions for a range of property related agreements, particularly leases, licences, easements, and contracts of sale/purchase, tailored to clients’ specific needs.

• WA’s COVID-19 Commercial Tenancy Law Extended for 6 Months
• COVID-19 WA Commercial Tenancies Code of Conduct – 29 May 2020
• COVID-19 – Commercial Tenancies Update (24 April 2020)
• COVID-19 – Commercial Tenancies Update – The New Commercial Tenancies (COVID-19 Response) Bill 2020 (WA) (20 April 2020)
• COVID-19 – Commercial Tenancies – Mandatory Code of Conduct (9 April 2020)

• Law Society of Western Australia
• Property Council of Australia
• 2019 & 2020 Committee Member of the Property Council of Australia, Western Australia Division Commercial Committee
• Australian Institute of Management
• Australasian Legal Practice Management Association