Illustrative case study. Details are generic and do not describe an identifiable client.
The situation
A client was days away from signing a five-year lease for a restaurant in a suburban centre. The agent had described the document as "the standard lease" and there was pressure to sign before another tenant did.
What we did
We reviewed the lease against the Retail Shop Leases Act obligations and flagged the terms that mattered commercially: a rent review mechanism with no cap, a make-good clause requiring the premises to be returned in a better condition than it was received, and a personal guarantee with no end date. We prepared a short written advice ranking the issues by cost, then negotiated the amendments with the landlord's agent.
The lesson
There is no such thing as a standard commercial lease. The clauses that cost the most are rarely the ones a tenant thinks to ask about — and they are far cheaper to fix before signature than to litigate afterwards.
Every matter turns on its own facts. Past outcomes are not a guarantee of future results.