It is rather unsurprising that more and more of the larger corporates are moving towards hiring in-house legal counsel teams, to oversee and advise upon legal issues.  Most certainly, part of the reason is to reduce cost.  Firstly, hiring an in-house legal team can be less expensive than paying city rate private practice lawyers.  More importantly however, in doing so they retain consistency and a hands-on approach, which invariably occurs from having someone with the legal expertise being on-hand to answer queries as and when they arise.

Meanwhile, for many smaller companies it is not viable to incur the cost of hiring in-house counsel.  However, as a result, they do not acquire the same insight or service from private practice.  In other words, the manner in which private practice is set up, it is often too expensive and impractical for smaller businesses to retain a solicitor to offer and provide the services that would ordinarily be provided by an in-house legal team.

Consequently at 43Legal our bespoke legal packages are devised in a cost effective manner in order for you to have access to the in-house legal services that larger corporates are able to afford on either a consultancy basis or by utilising our retainer option.

Our role as in-house legal counsel, at 43 Legal is to act as a business partner, enabler, and guardian to your business.  Most importantly, we will work alongside you as part of your team.  In other words, we are aware that you will have business objectives, and our role is to help to accomplish those objectives, in a manner where we help to guard the company from unreasonable amount of risk.

Above all, by working in-house, we are on hand to answer those questions as and when they arise because we are there and part of your business, not some remote lawyer that does not understand the nature or extent of your business, who needs time to ‘get up to speed’ each time a query arises.

In turn, for example, we will be on hand for you to simply ask “Can we do this?”.  Moreover, it may well be clearly permissible, in which case the answer will be, “of course, carry on”.  However, often the answer maybe, “You can’t quite do it exactly like that, but if you make these tweaks and operate within these guidelines, you can minimise the potential risk”.  Invariably the answer might be no, but before reaching that conclusion, we will really dig in and see what adjustments we can propose to carry out your objectives.  Most importantly, when instructing solicitors in private practice, either you may not think to ask the question, or the solicitor may not be able to provide the same response in such a timely manner, having not worked alongside the business.

In addition, where necessary we will work with external bodies and professionals to ensure cost efficient legal advice is obtained to ensure you focus on what is important: – driving productivity and growth.

In short, some of the areas we can assist with are as follows:-

Policies and Procedures – Review and implement policies and procedures to minimise and reduce exposure to potential risk, for example implementing streamlined systems to reduce the potential exposure to being fined by the ICO.

Corporate Governance – Support and assistance in terms of legal governance relating to the board.

Legal Health Check – Provide a legal health check to identify potential areas of risk and offer solutions to reduce or minimise any risk involved.

External Advice – Manage and assist in terms of project specific issues and managing third party experts and advisors.

Cost Saving Strategies – Advising of cost saving strategies for example identifying ways in which to restructure the business to reduce overall cost; reducing bad debts and maximise profitability both in the short term and the long term.