Legal support for a fixed annual fee

VIP Legal is my annual subscription. You pay one fixed fee for the year and I act as your company’s lawyer for day-to-day matters, such as the legal questions that come up, the contracts you’re asked to sign and the employment problems that arise. It’s for owner-managed businesses which have regular legal work but not enough of it to justify employing their own in-house lawyer.

An outside general counsel

Larger companies employ a general counsel, a senior in-house lawyer who the directors go to first with anything legal. That person knows the business, sees problems early and decides what needs outside help and what doesn’t. Employing one costs six figures a year, which is unlikely to be something a business of your size can spend.

Instead, you can outsource the role to me, and I’ll act as your in-house lawyer but from outside the business. You don’t have a salary, PAYE or a notice period to think about, and you get me each time and not a trainee. Over a year I get to know how your business works, who your customers and suppliers are and what you worry about, so the advice gets quicker and more useful as time goes on. I’ve written elsewhere about the value of good legal support for smaller businesses.

What the annual fee covers

Day-to-day legal advice is the main part of it, with no cap on the number of questions. You can email me or book a call or video call whenever something comes up, and subscribers get priority over my other work. I can’t quite promise 24/7 as I need to sleep, but you should expect a prompt answer and shouldn’t have to chase me.

Contract review is included. You can send me any agreement you’ve been asked to sign or are thinking of using, from an NDA to a distribution agreement, a joint venture or a service level agreement, and I’ll tell you where the risks are and what I’d change. That covers every kind of commercial contract except a business sale or purchase.

Employment support is included as well. Where they’re needed I’ll put up-to-date employment contracts and a staff handbook in place, and I’ll advise you or your HR person on employment issues as they arise, although the hands-on HR stays with them.

Once a year I go through the business as if you were about to sell it and tell you what a buyer’s solicitor would pick up, such as missing contracts, company records that don’t match reality or intellectual property that was never assigned. You get a list of what to tidy up and in what order.

Finally, if you have a dispute with a customer or a supplier, or over an unpaid invoice, I’ll give you initial advice and a view on strategy before it goes to court.

What it doesn’t cover

The subscription covers advice and review. Larger pieces of standalone work are what I call project work, and I quote for those separately on a fixed fee. That means drafting new contracts or rewriting existing ones (the employment contracts and handbook are the exception), transactions such as selling your business or buying another one, and training sessions for your team, which I’m happy to run at an extra cost. You still get my initial advice on any of these as part of the subscription, so you know what’s involved before you commit to anything.

On disputes, initial advice and an early exchange of letters are within the subscription. If it becomes more than that, and certainly if it’s heading to court or a tribunal, it’s handled with one of my Nexa colleagues who does dispute work every day. I’ll choose the right person for the matter and introduce you, and they’ll agree their fee with you separately. I stay involved because I know the business, but I don’t run court cases.

Who it suits

I designed it for small and medium-sized businesses, and in practice it fits the larger small companies and the smaller medium-sized ones best, as they have enough going on that legal questions come up most weeks. You’ll be an owner-managed or family-run business as opposed to a larger corporate or PLC, because I just get on better with people than with organisations.

If you only need a solicitor a couple of times a year then the subscription won’t be right for you, and you’d be better off paying for those pieces of work as they come up. I’ve written about when a business actually needs a lawyer if you’re not sure which applies to you.

I limit the number of subscribers I take on, so that I can be responsive and available to each of them.

How the fee is set and paid

The fee is generally between £15,000 and £25,000 plus VAT a year. Where you fall in that range depends on your turnover and number of employees, and I’ll fix it after an initial look at the business, in writing, before anything starts. It’s one price for the year, and it can be paid monthly, though that costs a little more than paying annually.

The term is twelve months and it doesn’t renew automatically, so if you don’t want a second year you just let me know.

For comparison, my hourly rate for work outside a fixed fee is £500 plus VAT, so the lower end of the range is the price of about thirty hours. Whether that’s good value depends on how much you’d use it, but the advantage of a fixed fee is that a question doesn’t cost anything extra, so you can ask early and get guidance before a small issue becomes a costly problem.

How to start

Send me a short description of the business (what it does, roughly what it turns over, how many people it employs) and what sort of legal questions have come up in the last year. I’ll tell you whether I think the subscription fits and what the fee would be. If you go ahead, you sign Nexa Law’s client paperwork and I get started. I’m a consultant solicitor and all legal work is carried out through Nexa Law Limited, which is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (number 633024). New clients also pay an ID check of £30 plus VAT per director or shareholder.

Do get in touch and send me the details.