To address the myriad of legal issues that arise when running a business, many companies rely on one or two, or perhaps even several, traditional law firms for their legal needs.
Unfortunately, this approach is inherently inefficient and costly. And that’s not what businesses need at any time — and especially in the current climate. With the twin threats of Covid-19 and potential post-Brexit complexity front-of-mind, businesses are working very hard indeed to identify and eradicate inefficiencies and needless cost.
So why is relying on even a small number of law firms for different types of legal work costing you excessive time and money?
Well, for starters you might only use a particular law firm for a specific legal area. As a result, the law firm lawyer assigned to you on each occasion is unlikely to be that familiar with your business. In fact, you could have a different lawyer assigned each time. This means you have to spend a great deal of time – time you don’t have – bringing them up to speed on your business and its affairs.
Worse still, you may not have full control over who is doing the legal work. It’s not unusual for a proportion of the work you discuss with your assigned lawyer to end up on the desk of a junior back at the law firm.
And having lawyers who have such a tenuous connection with your business working on your behalf is fraught with problems. If they don’t understand your values, your priorities and your appetite for risk, how can they represent you effectively? A lawyer, unfamiliar with your business will struggle to give you relevant commercial advice or focus on getting right that clause in a contract that is key to your company’s operations. Instead, you are far more likely to be presented with a list of legal points to decipher. And we know that businesses don’t consult lawyers because they want to learn the law!
Why not go ‘in-house’?
Of course, you could always opt for a full-time in-house lawyer. This can work very well for companies depending on the nature and volume of your legal needs. The problem here is that often there is insufficient legal work to warrant a full-time in-house legal role. Added to which, when you add up the salary and benefits package, it’s not a particularly economic option.
You may also find that your in-house lawyer’s experience doesn’t cover all of the legal areas that can impact your business. The result? You’re back, for some of the time at least, on the cost and inefficiency merry-go-round of engaging external law firms or specialist lawyers.
There is a third way – the TLD way
And for many companies it has proved to be the perfect solution for keeping costs under control and maximising efficiency.
At The Legal Director we are a fully regulated law firm that provides businesses with highly experienced lawyers – but on a part-time or flexible basis according to the client’s need.
By working smarter, embedded as part of your business, and by delivering legal advice from your business perspective, we can demonstrably save our clients significant amounts of directors’ time, as well as consistently adding business value.
And we don’t just come in for one-off projects. We are retained typically for between one and six days a month, which can easily be flexed up or down depending upon what issues your business currently faces. But the important thing is this: we very quickly get to understand your business and its commercial objectives and we can very quickly start contributing to the business at the highest level.
Time now, perhaps, to explore the third way – the TLD way – and improve the efficacy of how your business deals with its legal matters.
As ever, we’re on hand and ready to help. Just pick up the phone and call us on 020 3056 8538 or send us an email.
