Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services as a separate branch of law has evolved with the opening of the water resources of the oceans and seas for the purpose of carrying cargo or goods and sometimes even passengers to far away locations. It was because, while using sea routes, vessels usually enter and leave different countries. 

Hence, in such cases allocating or deciding where a particular country’s boundary ends and from where it always starts remains a point of debate in such cases. It was after taking into account the complexity of cases, which a need was felt to develop laws on this subject matter.  

Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services includes the study and practice of following sub-branches:

1. Shipping Laws

Shipping laws, in itself, includes a plethora of branches and sub-branches. Right from dealing with the various rights, duties and obligations of the ship owners, port operators, charterers to flight forwarders, hull and cargo insurers to ship and bunker supply companies, brokers as well as large multinational oil companies. All these come within the scope of practice of admiralty, shipping and maritime legal services.

2. Marine Offshore Laws 

Marine Offshore laws as a sub-branch of Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal services involves the study of both contentious as well as non-contentious aspects of marine offshore laws.  All matters relating to the offshore industry like all aspects of gas and oil industries, EPC, LNG, FPSOs, ship repair, international cross border disputes, ship conversion contracts, and matters as well as multi-jurisdictional work falls under this category of maritime laws.

Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services involve dealing with any and all matters listed as below as part of their practice: 

• Prime focus of Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services involve Shipbuilding Agreements and Contracts; Ship Mortgages; Port Privatisation, Ship Building, ship arrest and release; Drilling Contracts; Operations and Maintenance Contracts; Requests for Proposals for Shipping; Sale and Purchase Agreements; Ship Finance; Loan Agreements, Bills of Lading; Collision;
• Apart from this Joint Ventures as well as Joint Operations Agreements Maritime Arbitration; Marine Insurance and adjudication of claims under these policies, Ship or Crew related criminal matters also fall within the scope of work for such legal professionals;
• Besides dealing with these routine areas of work involved in Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services, professionals engaged in providing legal services in this field also handle major issues and transactions like handling cross-border litigation or arbitration that may arise out of collisions, contractual disputes, oil spills, pollution and product liabilities, etc.
• Transactional areas include mergers and acquisitions, take over, financing, logistics to wage and so on while domestic and international regulatory part takes care of all the legal and procedural compliances required in this industry.

It is not for nothing that practice in this area of law requires a lot of dedication apart from the theoretical expertise and deep insight on how this industry functions. Hence, if you are inclined to providing Admiralty, Shipping and Maritime Legal Services to your client, ensure that you have sufficient exposure along with knowledge on this vast subject matter.