Most of the legal work a business needs doesn’t arrive as a transaction. It arrives as an email. A customer wants to change the terms. A supplier has sent a contract with a clause that looks odd. A manager wants to know whether they can sign. Someone has promised a client something nobody checked. These questions are small until they are answered wrongly, or not at all, and the answer surfaces six months later.
We act as the legal resource for management between the big transactions, either on an ongoing basis or for a defined project, so issues are dealt with when they come up.
Most questions are quick ones, and the value is in having a lawyer who already knows your contracts, your structure and your people, so you aren’t briefing someone from scratch every time. We advise on the commercial and corporate questions that come up in running the business, and we tell you when something needs a full piece of work and when it can simply be answered and left.
Not every contract needs a full legal review, and not every one should be signed on a skim. We help sort them: routine contracts that can be signed under existing authority, contracts that need a closer look, and contracts that need us at the negotiating table.
We mark up the documents, tell you which points matter and which don’t, and support whoever is running the negotiation, whether that is you, a manager or us.
A business that signs the same type of contract fifty times a year shouldn’t negotiate it from scratch fifty times. We build standard agreement suites, clause banks and playbooks that record the business’s preferred position on each key term, the fallback it can live with and the point at which a deal has to be escalated.
Staff can then run routine negotiations on their own, and the contracts that reach us are the ones that need a lawyer.
A contract process answers three questions: who can sign what, who has to see it first, and where it goes afterwards. We help set up approval processes and workflows that match how the business actually operates, linked to the delegations of authority that sit behind them.
Most contracts also contain a few dates that matter a great deal and that nobody is watching: notice periods for variations and delay claims, payment claim timeframes, option exercise windows and renewal or termination notice dates. Missing one can cost more than a year of legal fees. We help build the process that catches them.
Boards and senior managers need to know where the legal risk sits: which contracts are up for renewal, which disputes are live, which compliance items are open. We prepare reporting for management and the board on the legal issues that matter to the business, in a form that can be read in a few minutes.
We also train the people who handle contracts day to day. That covers how to read a contract, what not to promise in an email, and when to pick up the phone.
Some businesses have no legal team. Others have one that is stretched. We act as retained external counsel, support particular transactions or projects, and take overflow from in-house teams, working with your templates and processes where you have them.
We agree at the start what is covered, who your contact is and how the work is charged, so you know what you are getting before the first question arrives.
