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Novus Leisure is one of the UK’s largest bar, club and restaurant operators. It is an industry leader in the sector with sites dominating London’s West End and the City, in addition to the UK’s major cities. It owns brands such as Balls Brothers, Tank & Paddle and Tiger Tiger, offering distinctive experiences that bring together first-class locations, food and the best in wines, cocktails and premium beers.
Novus’ CFO Sharon Badelek explains that by design, Novus’ headquarters are lean and focused, with a senior management team comprising only a chief executive, a customer experience and sales director, an operations director, and herself.
“Historically, although we did make use of external lawyers, we tried to handle routine legal issues in-house,” she explains. “Essentially, that meant that I was spending a significant amount of time reading, reviewing and negotiating contracts.”
“The difficulty with this was obvious,” she adds.
“CFOs are highly qualified and experienced accountants, rather than qualified and experienced lawyers. And while—like most CFOs—I’m certainly not uncomfortable with reviewing and agreeing contracts, the fact remains that it’s best to have legal experts looking at legal documents.”
Another difficulty was the sheer amount of time that this entailed, with the legal responsibilities involved in her role adding to an already high workload. Again, this was less than ideal.
What to do? In a previous role with another organisation, The Legal Director’s lawyer Anne Whalley had worked with Sharon for over six years, and Sharon got in touch with Anne to see if The Legal Director might be able to help.
“We met up, to see what might be possible,” explains Anne. “It soon became clear that spending as little as one day a week at Novus’ offices would have a significant and positive impact on the business, while being considerably less expensive than trying to deal with these issues through an external law firm.”
Agreement was quickly reached.
“I was already very familiar with the quality of Anne’s work,” explains Sharon. “The fact that we could bring her on board, through The Legal Director, for just one day a week, was a compelling proposition. It made obvious sense, and I really didn’t hesitate.”
Straightaway, Anne took over the task of reviewing—and if necessary, negotiating—any incoming contracts, prior to Sharon signing them.
“The fact that Anne is reviewing our contracts doesn’t prevent me from reading them—naturally, I don’t sign documents that I haven’t read,” says Sharon. “But when the documents reach my desk, I know that Anne will have already undertaken any necessary ‘pushback’ and revisions, and that the document will be acceptable to us.”
And while contracts form the core of the workload, the convenience of having an in-house legal counsel has prompted a broader role. The staff handbook and contracts of employment have been revised and updated, for instance, and work undertaken on GDPR, compliance, intellectual property protection, regulatory issues and leases.
“Anne has done a lot for us on GDPR, and it has been invaluable to have been able to respond to the introduction of GDPR led by someone with expertise in this area,” sums up Sharon.
One year on, Novus is in no doubt that the decision to engage The Legal Director was the right one.
“There isn’t a single department within the business with which I’m not interacting,” says Anne.
“We’re getting high quality legal advice, a better service, and it’s costing us far less than if we went to an external law firm,” adds Sharon. “It’s about having someone within the business who I can trust, who has the skill set that we need and is commercial. If Anne has worked on something, then I know that it will be correct—and the impact on my own workload has been enormous.”
The Legal Director is a legal consultancy that provides businesses with high-calibre experienced lawyers on a part-time or flexible basis.
By working smarter as part of the client’s business, and by delivering legal advice from a business perspective, we can demonstrably save our clients significant amounts of money and directors’ time.
The Legal Director is the most transparent, cost-effective way of embedding a senior lawyer within your business — at a fraction of the cost of employing a full-time Legal Director or engaging with a traditional law firm on an ad hoc basis.
We match one of our lawyers to your business needs and he/she then performs as a member of your senior management team, just like an in-house lawyer. Moreover, clients can use our unique 9-point legal framework for business-focused legal advice to systematically address key areas for business growth that require legal expertise and appropriate action.
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