DOCET LEGAL

Practice · 13

Outsourced general counsel

Your legal department, on a fixed monthly fee. Without the payroll.

For businesses with regular legal questions and no in-house lawyer.

The arrangement

Most businesses meet a lawyer the way they meet a plumber: when something has already gone wrong, at a price set by urgency. The contract that should have been read gets read after it is signed. The employee who should have been managed gets managed after the claim.

A retainer changes the timing. For a fixed monthly fee the practice becomes the place the question goes first, the same day, before the decision is made. Contracts get reviewed as they arrive. Employment questions get answered before the meeting. The regulator's letter gets a reply. The renewals and deadlines that matter get tracked, and you hear about them before they pass. Once a quarter there is a short review of what is coming.

The fee is fixed, written down and reviewed annually. The scope is agreed before it starts. And because the practice does not litigate, the advice is always aimed at keeping you out of a dispute, not toward one.

What a retainer typically covers

How it starts

  1. A scoping conversation

    What the business does, what legal questions come up, how often, and what has been sitting undone. From that, a scope: which kinds of work are inside the retainer and which are quoted separately.

  2. The terms, in writing

    The monthly fee, what it covers, the response time you can expect, how larger matters are quoted, and the notice period on either side. Nothing starts until this is agreed and a costs disclosure has been issued.

  3. Then it just runs

    You send the contract, the question, the letter that arrived. You get an answer. The practice keeps the dates that matter to the business, contract renewals, option deadlines, registrations, and reminds you before they fall due, which it does only for retainer clients.

Where the line is

  • A retainer covers advisory, drafting and negotiation work. A dispute that reaches a tribunal, a business sale, or a large project is quoted as its own matter, with the retainer client's rate.
  • Court proceedings remain outside the practice and are referred to a litigator on the panel, as with every other area.

Nobody pays anybody for a referral here, in either direction. How the practice hands work on →

Common questions

  • What does the retainer cost?

    It depends on the scope, so it is quoted after the scoping conversation rather than published as a tariff. The fee is a fixed monthly amount, agreed in writing, and reviewed each year. It is set so that a business with regular legal questions pays less than it would matter by matter, and never opens an invoice it did not expect.

  • Who is this for?

    A business large enough to have legal questions most weeks and too small to employ a lawyer. Typically a company with staff, contracts on both sides, and an owner who is currently doing the legal reading themselves at night. The retainer replaces that with a standing arrangement.

  • Can we stop?

    Yes, on the notice period written into the terms. There is no lock-in beyond that. A retainer that a client keeps because it is useful is the only kind worth running.

  • Is the practice still fixed-fee for retainer clients on bigger matters?

    Yes. A business sale or a tribunal matter is quoted as its own fixed-fee or staged matter, the same way as for any client, with the retainer client's rate. The retainer does not become a meter.

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Make an enquiry

Send a short note about what is happening. You will hear back within one business day, and there is no charge for finding out whether the matter is a fit.

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