Client: The Compleat Food Group

Business background

The Compleat Food Group formed in 2021 from the amalgamation of Addo Food Group and Winterbotham Darby. The group has 28 statutory entities under its umbrella and a turnover of around £700 million. Its product portfolio includes some of the nation’s best-known brands such as Unearthed, Wall’s Pastry, Wrights Food Group, Pork Farms, Vadasz and Squeaky Bacon.

The business holds itself to high ethical and environmental standards and is committed to delivering quality, tasty and affordable food in a way that maximises the social, economic and environmental well-being of the communities in which it operates.

Legal services required

The increased size and turnover of the newly formed group introduced a level of complexity that provoked the business to rethink how it dealt with its legal work. This work included complex commercial contracts, terms & conditions, NDA’s, company secretarial work and HR support.

Previously reliant on a variety of external law firms, the business was looking for a more consistent and comprehensive solution and wondered if their own in-house lawyer would be the best solution.

Why The Legal Director?

Having never employed the services of an in-house lawyer before, when Chief Financial Officer John Lane was approached by TLD’s director Kirstie Penk on LinkedIn, he realised the timing was perfect as what he needed was an external view on how best to meet the business’s legal needs.

Knowing that TLD had supported similar businesses considering this question, he was confident that Kirstie would give him expert advice. They met and after carefully considering the nature of the group and its requirements, she proposed a solution that John was happy to trial.

Legal services provided

A Client Legal Director with considerable experience in the food industry was matched with the business and charged with fulfilling two functions. The first was to assess the group’s legal uses and needs and write a bespoke ‘Your Legal Blueprint’ report. This provided the comprehensive overview that John wanted and set down a robust plan for legal priorities in the upcoming six months and the different options the business had for resourcing their legal needs.

The second aspect was to manage the group’s legal work and deal with the full range of legal issues that arise in a large business. Since joining the organisation, the TLD Client Director has standardised the terms & conditions for suppliers and customers across the group, lent support in mergers & acquisitions, provided competition advice and reviewed all commercial contracts.

They have also provided Intellectual Property support, working on a Brand Licensing Agreement and advising on some trademark assets that were in administration. Because of their background as an experienced General Counsel, who was used to running a legal function they were also involved in GDPR matters and the tender process for the legal support required by the business’s HR function, benchmarking costs and saving the business a considerable amount of money.

Benefits to the business

John says that the advantages of having a TLD lawyer working in-house were felt straight away: “I was trying to put together a finance structure for the wider group whilst also dealing
with ongoing and urgent legal work. Having someone that was clearly extremely capable taking workload off my desk so I could focus on the business was an immediate benefit.”
John describes the support he receives as “a comfort blanket”, feeling reassured that work is being dealt with without his involvement and valuing the good advice and sound judgment that he has consistently been given.

He reports that the business has been able to considerably dial down its reliance on external lawyers and cites having just one point of contact as one of the main attractions of the TLD in-house service model. “The great thing about dealing with one person is there’s a consistency of approach. I don’t need to repeatedly go over the background of what we’re trying to achieve. Any time you go externally, the first thing you need to do is brief the firm and, to be honest, you don’t know whether they really get it or not. You often end up dealing with five or six different people.”

The Compleat Food Group is a business with a strong identity and defined ethical values and John can clearly see the benefits of having someone in-house who can support these values in the work they do. He says, “It’s the points around understanding the business and being able to apply a legal framework around all our needs and priorities that you get from having a lawyer within the business.

The TLD “Your Legal Blueprint” report has been invaluable to enable me to consider the different ways our business could resource its legal needs, written by someone who knows how businesses of our size and complexity manage their legal affairs most efficiently.”

“The TLD “Your Legal Blueprint” report has been invaluable to enable me to consider the different ways our business could resource its legal needs...”

About The Legal Director

The Legal Director is a fully regulated legal consultancy that provides businesses with high calibre, senior lawyers on a part-time or flexible basis. Our Client Legal Directors work as part of the business, delivering legal advice from a commercial perspective, demonstrably saving our clients significant amounts of money and directors’ time.

If your business needs have changed, are about to change, or you are unsure what legal resource you require, we can produce ‘Your Legal Blueprint’ for you to clarify your requirements. Your bespoke report determines what level of resource you need, where it should be sourced, as well as highlighting internal training needs and supplying a legal workplan for the next six months. We can produce this as a discrete piece of work or alongside our customary part-time in-house legal service.

Do you require similar legal advice or legal services?

Call us on 020 3056 8538,
Email us at info@thelegaldirector.co.uk
or send us an enquiry.