Privately-held Bristol Sport is part of a group of companies that includes five sports teams—Bristol City (men’s and women’s), Bristol Bears (men’s and women’s), and Bristol Flyers Basketball—as well as the 27,000-seater Ashton Gate Stadium, a multi-purpose venue for sport, conferences and events.
Traditionally, the business has relied on a number of law firms for legal work, as well as retaining a number of highly specialised sports lawyers for situations such as contractual negotiations with players and their agents.
Joining the business in 2016, incoming group chief financial officer Gavin Marshall was tasked with centralising services procurement, to better leverage the buying power of the Bristol Sport group.
Expenditure on legal services appeared to be an obvious opportunity, he recalls.
“It wasn’t just the number of law firms that we were using,
it was also a question of efficiency. If, for example, you’re only using a particular lawyer or law firm once a year, then they’re not going to be especially familiar with the business, and so won’t be working quite as efficiently as a lawyer who has regular contact time.”
One option might have been an in-house lawyer; however, further investigation showed that there wasn’t enough work to warrant this.
Another problem was the sheer diversity of legal work involved, thanks to the diversity of Bristol Sport’s own extensive operations. Selecting an individual firm to tackle this breadth of work would be difficult, without going to one of the national ‘majors’—a relatively costly option which would obviously negate some of the sought-for savings.
Looking closely at the type of work involved, however, Marshall suddenly realised that he already knew a broadly-based lawyer capable of handling it, having worked with her over an eight-year period when they were both working at a previous employer.
These days, he knew, the lawyer in question—Amanda Mallender— was part of The Legal Director, a legal services provider about which he knew relatively little. It was time, clearly, to pick up the phone and learn more.
“Not long afterwards, I proposed to the board that we engage Amanda Mallender and The Legal Director on a trial basis—and we haven’t looked back since,” he sums up.
There were a number of aspects of The Legal Director’s offering that appealed, relates Marshall.
First, having a lawyer working part-time in-house would obviously be cheaper than going out to external law firms.
Second, while the expectation—on both sides—was that Amanda Mallender would be able to handle the vast majority of the work involved, she would also have access to The Legal Director’s entire range of legal specialists. So if something out of the ordinary cropped up, that expertise would be available to Bristol Sport.
Third, he could see that ‘badging’ Amanda Mallender as Bristol Sport’s own in-house lawyer would add weight to negotiations with third parties—something that obviously wasn’t possible when using an external law firm. All in all, the business case for using The Legal Director was quite compelling.
The initial arrangement was for on-site presence for two days a month, plus ad-hoc work as required.
The work involved was as varied as had been expected: negotiating contracts for matters as diverse as the music acts that were being booked to play in the stadium; the production and delivery of branded team coaches; agreements for the manufacture and sponsorship of the players’ kits; contracts for advertising and pouring rights at the stadium; updating standard terms and conditions; employment law advice and helping to resolve contractual disputes.
And quite quickly, realised Marshall, it was evident that the arrangement was working out as expected.
“Amanda was dealing perfectly well with everything that we threw at her—and our legal costs had substantially reduced,” he sums up. “It really was a ‘win-win’ situation.”
And in fact, he relates, all of the sought-for benefits duly materialised.
What hadn’t been anticipated, however, was that there would be yet further benefits from working with The Legal Director— benefits that were a little more intangible, but no less valuable for that, he explains.
“It has substantially reduced our risk: generally speaking, external lawyers are typically involved quite late in the process, while Amanda is involved in discussions from the start. Our staff, too, have definitely learned a lot from working with Amanda; we find that they’re working more efficiently, and that things are taking less time. Finally, with her spending time in the office, she has built up relationships with our people, who these days proactively approach her for advice—which again, helps us to increase our efficiency while reducing our risk.”
The bottom line? Marshall is in no doubt: by electing to work with The Legal Director, Bristol Sport has undeniably scored a winner.
The Legal Director is a fully regulated 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 business areas that require legal expertise and appropriate action.
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