Fixed fee retainer agreements

For a lot of clients, seeking the legal advice or assistance from a solicitor is often a matter of last resort or estate planning. For litigation, especially for defendants, the legal costs can be onerous, unwanted but necessary.

However, for clients which may be individuals running their own businesses or running their own company, there are lots of issues for which you could regularly do with a little professional guidance or assistance to ensure you are acting in the correct manner or following the correct route to maximise the position and profitability of your business.

Whilst ideally most businesses would have an in-house accountant and solicitor to advise and assist on a full-time basis, this is not always worth it or affordable. Ideally you would have a legal advisor on tap, which you could turn on or off at minimal cost or for a Fixed Fee.

A fixed fee solicitor is always preferable as it creates certainty and enables your business to manage its budget, whether that be by instruction via a fixed fee agreement or by way of a regular fixed fee retainer agreement whereby a standard monthly or annual service charge is paid for regular on hand legal assistance across a variety of areas governing your business.

The fixed fee retainer

The solution is to agree a fixed fee arrangement with a solicitor who can provide you with a dedicated level of service, at a cost which you, your business or your company can afford, and with access to solicitors of varying seniority to deal with a variety of legal matters, ranging from simple procedural issues that junior solicitors can assist with through to more complex advice in respect of business risks, threats of litigation and commercial arrangements.

• an example could be a situation where a statutory demand is received – what can be done to set it aside or avoid the publication of notice of a subsequent winding-up petition? A junior fee earner would be able to set out a full range of options in a very short space of time and assist you with decision-making.
• another example may be a construction dispute or other commercial litigation claim – what does the letter of claim mean? Has the claimant followed the correct protocol? What steps could easily be taken to immediately limit the risk of loss? A more senior solicitor would be able to discuss such matters at short notice rather than a more formal appointment and the delay of client identification and take on matters.

An arrangement with a firm of fixed fee solicitors which provides a fixed tariff of time for a fixed price would enable certainty of cost to your business and also enable immediate access to legal advisors at all levels of experience.

This is undoubtedly considerably quicker and cheaper than a one-off instruction or alternatively the cost of employing someone to come in-house.

Fixed fee solution provided by Francis Wilks & Jones

We can provide a fixed fee solution to meet your requirements in terms of your budget and your requirements. All of our fixed fee rates would provide access to all levels of solicitor up to and including partner level.

The prices and services can be fixed bespoke to your needs.

For example, we could agree a fixed fee of (for example) £499/month for access to any level of fee earner up to a monthly maximum of 2-3 hours (which would be a substantial saving on commercial rates) subject to your requirements and agreement to a minimum term.

However, this is just an example and a wide variety of arrangements will be considered, subject to your needs.

At Francis Wilks & Jones we will always consider any terms of a fixed fee retainer agreement bespoke to your business’ needs. Or any other type of funding model.

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Please call any member of our commercial litigation team for your consultation now. Alternatively e mail us with your enquiry and we will call you back at a time convenient to you.