Personal Info
Peter V. Benjafield is the Principal of Benjafield & Associates, the Chatswood firm that has carried his name since 1977. He is a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, a Notary Public, and a Law Society Accredited Specialist in Business Law. That combination matters because the firm’s work often sits where private decisions and commercial consequences meet. A company document may not look dramatic until directors disagree. A business structure may seem fine until there is pressure from ASIC, a lender, a buyer, a partner, or a shareholder.
A contract may look harmless until someone needs it enforced. Peter’s practice gives clients a place to bring those questions before the position gets worse. His work includes company and business law, commercial issues, shareholder and partnership concerns, documentation, transactions, disputes and the practical decisions that sit around them. The point is not to bury clients under legal vocabulary. It is to identify what the document means, what the risk is, what deadline or obligation matter, and what should happen before the next move is made.
Clients who contact a lawyer are often already carrying enough noise. They may have a letter to answer, a contract to sign, a business relationship that has come under pressure, an estate issue that keeps shifting, or a property decision that suddenly feels less simple than promised. Peter’s role is to slow the part that needs slowing and move the part that needs moving. That sounds plain because it should. Legal advice does not become more useful because it sounds ornate. It becomes useful when a client can leave the conversation knowing what is relevant, what is not, what documents matter, and what step carries the least unnecessary risk. After decades in practice, that kind of judgment and wisdom is not decoration. It is the work. His appointment as a Notary Public by the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Peter supports clients with foreign documents needing formal witnessing, certification or use beyond ordinary local paperwork. For business clients, Peter’s accredited specialist background is particularly relevant where decisions involve structure, governance, agreements, compliance, risk and commercial reality. The advice needs to survive more than the first conversation. It needs to stand up when pressure arrives, when another party pushes back, and when the document is read again later.
That is why his work begins with the same grounded question: what are you about to do next, and should you do it that way?
