Outsourced
In-house Counsel
A better way to resource your legal needs
In-house legal and compliance resourcing represents a quandary for many organisations. Employing in-house counsel is a big staffing commitment, but external legal advice is very costly, and generally not suited to many of a firm’s day-to-day legal tasks. At AB, we have developed a solution.
The AB Outsourced In-house service provides both flexibility and certainty. We offer our clients a tailored monthly fee that covers day-to-day in-house legal needs, with the opportunity to scale up at discounted rates for significant tasks or major projects.
When it comes to day-to-day legal needs, most smaller businesses are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Employing an in-house lawyer is a significant investment, but using law firms for day-to-day documents is prohibitively costly. The key to solving this problem is understanding that in-house and external legal require a fundamentally different approach.
— Nik Albrecht, Principal
Why it works
In-house lawyers practice law in a fundamentally different way to most private practice lawyers
Where a private practice lawyer will often be managing a few larger matters, your average in-house counsel will often be managing 20 or 30 smaller matters at any given time - most of which need to be turned around efficiently for the business to operate. How do they manage this? By employing an approach characterised by a higher level of commerciality and a greater risk tolerance. For instance, it simply isn’t worth turning around documents multiple times to negotiate clauses that are very unlikely to have any long-term relevance to the commercial arrangement.
External firms can find this approach difficult to apply as they are trained to focus on legal rather than commercial risks, and also because they simply aren’t close enough to the business to accurately assess commercial priorities.
The AB team have a wealth of experience supporting businesses from the inside
The result is what we strongly believe is a best-in-class service offering to support smaller businesses’ legal demands, striking the right balance between technical rigour and commercial efficiency.
Get the level of support that works for you
Perhaps you’d prefer to keep ownership of certain documents - or maybe you have some paralegal or other legally trained staff already. We can manage as much or as little as you like - the service is completely flexible.
How it works
Stage 1:
Initial Assessment and Recommendations
Initial Review: we review your current legal arrangements depending on your needs. This may include:
Key recurring agreements (e.g. Engagement Agreements, NDAs, Fee Agreements, Side Letters, Referral Agreements, Employment Contracts).
Governance documents such as resolutions and board papers.
Determining what level of access you require for legal advice.
Stage 2:
Ongoing Support at a Fixed Monthly Cost
Day-to-Day tasks: we define what constitutes the day-to-day work for your organisation and provide a fixed monthly cost to service those needs. Day-to-day work for your organisation may include:
Key product and client contracts - e.g. letters of engagement, terms and conditions, fee letters.
legal and regulatory questions and queries in all areas of law (such as commercial, employment and privacy law);
amendments to key documentation;
template agreements;
keep you up to date with amendments to legislation;
Stage 3:
Efficient Execution of Projects as they Arise
Flexible support for projects: major projects are done at discounted hourly rates – providing for flexible capacity based on your organisations needs. Our rates will typically be 50-70% of top-tier law firms.
What sets us apart
Genuine In-house Experience: Our staff includes lawyers with extensive experience in-house at leading organisations - all the way through to the general counsel level.
Risk neutrality: we tell you where the line is – you decided how close you want to be.
A focus on relationships: decisions are made by people – being right is only the first step.
What’s next?
Interested? Reach out and book an initial consultation free of charge.