43Legal

At 43Legal we are passionate about providing legal services in a manner that best supports the needs and delivers the outcomes that our clients need to ensure stability and profitability. Furthermore, our Virtual In-House Counsel service enables us to work alongside your business to provide legal advice as and when required in a manner that best suites you. Above all, our Virtual In-House Counsel services provides an alternative way to access legal advice in a way that is affordable, which is not necessarily charged upon hourly rates.

In-House Legal Counsel versus Private Practice?

It is rather unsurprising that more and more of the larger corporates are moving towards hiring in-house legal counsel teams, to oversee and advise upon legal issues. Most certainly, part of the reason is to reduce cost. Firstly, hiring an in-house legal team can be less expensive than paying city rate private practice lawyers. More importantly however, in doing so they retain consistency and a hands-on approach, which invariably occurs from having someone with the legal expertise being on-hand to answer queries as and when they arise.

Meanwhile, for many smaller companies it is not viable to incur the cost of hiring in-house counsel. However, as a result, they do not acquire the same insight or service from private practice. In other words, the manner in which private practice is set up, it is often too expensive and impractical for smaller businesses to retain a solicitor to offer and provide the services that would ordinarily be provided by an in-house legal team.

Consequently at 43Legal our bespoke legal packages are devised in a cost effective manner in order for you to have access to the in-house legal services that larger corporates are able to afford on either a consultancy basis or by utilising our retainer option.

What is 43 Legal’s Virtual In-House Legal Counsel package?

Our role as in-house legal counsel, at 43 Legal is to act as a business partner, enabler, and guardian to your business. Most importantly, we will work alongside you as part of your team. In other words, we are aware that you will have business objectives, and our role is to help to accomplish those objectives, in a manner where we help to guard the company from unreasonable amount of risk.

Above all, by working in-house, we are on hand to answer those questions as and when they arise because we are there and part of your business, not some remote lawyer that does not understand the nature or extent of your business, who needs time to ‘get up to speed’ each time a query arises.

In turn, for example, we will be on hand for you to simply ask “Can we do this?”. Moreover, it may well be clearly permissible, in which case the answer will be, “of course, carry on”. However, often the answer maybe, “You can’t quite do it exactly like that, but if you make these tweaks and operate within these guidelines, you can minimise the potential risk”. Invariably the answer might be no, but before reaching that conclusion, we will really dig in and see what adjustments we can propose to carry out your objectives. Most importantly, when instructing solicitors in private practice, either you may not think to ask the question, or the solicitor may not be able to provide the same response in such a timely manner, having not worked alongside the business.

In addition, where necessary we will work with external bodies and professionals to ensure cost efficient legal advice is obtained to ensure you focus on what is important: – driving productivity and growth.

What assistance can a Virtual In-House Counsel provide?

In short, some of the areas we can assist with are as follows:-

Policies and Procedures – Review and implement policies and procedures to minimise and reduce exposure to potential risk, for example implementing streamlined systems to reduce the potential exposure to being fined by the ICO.

Corporate Governance – Support and assistance in terms of legal governance relating to the board.

Legal Health Check – Provide a legal health check to identify potential areas of risk and offer solutions to reduce or minimise any risk involved.

External Advice – Manage and assist in terms of project specific issues and managing third party experts and advisors.

Cost Saving Strategies – Advising of cost saving strategies for example identifying ways in which to restructure the business to reduce overall cost; reducing bad debts and maximise profitability both in the short term and the long term.

At 43Legal we know how important maintaining a good reputation is, especially within legal services. Often people are quick to vocalise when things go wrong, perhaps more so than when they go right! Furthremore, we also know that legal service complaints can escalate quickly, especially if they are not dealt with proactively and efficiently, which can result in a legal service complaint being referred to the Legal Ombudsman (LeO).

Most importantly solicitors, RELs and RFLs are required pursuant to paragraph 8.5 of the SRA Code of Conduct to treat clients fairly and to deal with complaints promptly and free of charge. In addition, pursuant to Regulation 12 of the Provision of Services Regulations 2009 (as amended) solicitors are required to deal with complaints quickly and to make every effort to deal with them satisfactorily. Furthermore, the LeO is entitled to report any suspected delay or misconduct on the part of a solicitor to the SRA. Therefore, it is important that legal service complaints are taken seriously and dealt with appropriately in accordance with a firm’s complaints procedure, otherwise it could lead to a report to the SRA.

Unfortunately, no matter how good you are things do go wrong, whether it’s the fall in service levels or negligent advice. However, if dealt with appropriately a complaint may help promote your firm or even salvage the client relationship. On the other hand, complaints can be used as an attempt to avoid payment. Therefore, it is important to know how best to deal with legal service complaints when they arise.

Often when things do go wrong, there is not the time or resource available for someone to step in and resolve the issue, listen to the client, understand what has occurred and explore what avenues are available to rectify the issue. Moreover, depending on the size of law firm, it may not be cost effective to incur the overhead of recruiting a permanent member of staff to undertake the role. Alternatively, in larger firms it can sometimes be the case that capacity is not available to meet demand.

How can 43Legal help resolve complaints?

We can act as an independent third-party complaints’ handler, providing an independent and impartial view when dealing with a legal service complaint. Most importantly, we are not part of your firm. Therefore, we can help defuse the situation, whilst reducing the perception of bias. For example when making a final determination in respect of a complaint.

Alternatively, we can also help you and your staff deal with legal service complaints effectively. Most importantly by providing you with the tools to address legal service complaints efficiently, proactively and confidently.

What is your Virtual In-House Complaints Manager Service?

Primarily we assist law firms to ‘deal with and manage things when they go wrong’, by providing fixed fee, monthly retainer packages as well as in-house training. For example, our services may include the following: –

• We act as an independent third party complaints handler. For example when a compliant arises, it is referred to us and we liaise with the client to firstly identify the issues involved and what is required to address the issue. Most importantly, with the view to resolving the complaint amicably where possible.

• When a complaint arises involving breach of duty and/or negligence on the part of the firm, we liaise with the fee earners concerned, the client and if necessary, your professional indemnity insurer to then manage the complaint and claim through the process.

• We work with you as the first port of call. For example, if a potential negligence claim arises and it is necessary to notify your Professional Indemnity Insurers, we work with you and your Professional Indemnity Insurers to resolve the issue where possible. Most importantly, we safeguard the firms position with third parties.

• We work with you to identify and process notifiable issues to the SRA if or when the need arises.

• We can provide training to fee earners regarding how to deal with and manage legal service complaints effectively. For example the language to use, how to diffuse the situation and resolve complaints as soon as possible when they arise.

• We can also work with your firm to help identify problem areas, provide a series of best practice directives, whilst also reviewing and providing possible changes to your complaints policies and procedures.

Compliance and Practice Manager Services
Law firms regulated by the Solicitor Regulation Authority (the SRA) are required to comply with the SRA’s seven principles and at 43Legal our SRA Compliance Manager services are designed to help law firms to comply with the SRA requirements and to help navigate your way through what is required in terms of SRA compliance.

Depending upon your needs and requirements, we can tailor a bespoke package to assist with SRA compliance and manager services and advice required, whether that be on a retainer basis or project specific, fixed fee.

Some of the areas we cover and assist law firm with are as follows: –

Risk Management and Loss Prevention
• File Auditing – file reviews are an important way to ensure that quality control process and procedures are being implemented firm wide and can assist to help satisfy third parties such as Professional Indemnity Insurers that the firm is actively involved in risk prevention and therefore are considered low risk. Depending upon your needs, we can be retained to undertake monthly file reviews or a bespoke project as a means to review existing quality control systems. File audits can also be a helpful way of checking for AML compliance and client due diligence and whether these practices are adequate to meet the needs and potential exposure of the firm.

• Risk assessments – we help firms prepare and review bespoke risk assessments for example anti-money laundering practices. Ensuring that risk assessments are in place provides for a reasoned and risk-based approach by the firm and if things go wrong, they can also help in terms of being utilised as a defence in showing that the firm has exercised reasonable judgement.

• Reviewing and drafting terms and condition, in order to limit liability to clients.

Support for Risk and Compliance Teams
• Outsourced Compliance teams – we can offer a second opinion in the event that there are any issues as or when they arise.

• Often compliance teams can become over stretched certainly during peak times and rather than recruiting an additional member of staff, we can step in and assist in terms of providing compliance and risk management services on either a retainer basis or a specific bespoke project.

• We can assist in terms of helping you to overhaul your compliance office manual, client engagement letters. For example, what systems are in place to avoid conflict of interests occurring or breach of confidentiality? Are these practical and adequate for the size of the firm?

• Conflict of Interest/Confidentiality – We can help you to navigate through potentially difficult issues that arise involving conflict of interest, whether a conflict has arisen or a breach of confidentiality and how best to proceed.

GDPR and Data Protection Issues
• Subject Access Requests – We can assist in terms of identifying when a client’s request amounts to a subject access request (SAR).

• We can also assist in terms of helping to identify what documents are to be sent in order to comply with the request

• We are on hand to answer questions such as – What happens if a Subject Access Request includes information relating to a third party? When do I need to provide a response by? How long do I need to keep data for?