Legal & Regulatory

We provide senior commercial reading of legal documents, not regulated legal advice. When a contract, NDA, or term sheet lands on your desk, we triage it: what you are signing, where the risk sits, which clauses to push back on, and what a sensible negotiation looks like. We draft and refresh your policy stack (privacy, terms, cookies, handbook, supplier terms) and assess your GDPR, employment, and IP posture at a practical level. Think of us as the senior commercial brain in the room before, or instead of, an expensive solicitor. Where the work genuinely needs a regulated specialist, we say so and introduce one.

We do not do it, and we will not pretend to. Employment tribunal advocacy, FCA-authorised advice, court representation, contentious IP litigation, and regulated tax opinions all sit with qualified specialists. We keep a small panel of trusted firms covering these areas. When your matter crosses that line, we brief the specialist properly so you are not paying them to get up to speed from scratch. We take no referral fees, ever; the introduction is part of the engagement. You pay the specialist directly, on their terms, and we stay alongside as your commercial translator if helpful.

For a standard commercial contract, NDA, or term sheet, expect a senior read and written summary within 24 to 48 hours of receipt. Genuinely urgent items (a signature deadline tomorrow, a closing call this afternoon) we will usually fit in same day if we have capacity, and we will tell you straight away if we do not. Because David leads every engagement personally, there is no junior pass and no internal handover delay. What you get is a clear summary: what to sign, what to query, what to refuse, and which two or three clauses actually matter commercially.

Yes, clearly and early. Knowing where the commercial-versus-regulated line sits is half the job. If your matter involves live litigation, a tribunal claim, regulated financial promotions, a contested IP position, immigration, or anything where only a solicitor or barrister can properly act, we flag it in the first conversation. We then introduce you to the right specialist from our panel and brief them on the commercial context. You are never left guessing whether you have the right kind of help. We would rather lose the work than let you pay us for something we should not be doing.

We work to fixed fees per engagement wherever possible, not the billable hour. A senior commercial read of a contract or NDA, with written summary and a follow-up call, typically costs a fraction of a City solicitor's equivalent time, because you are paying for judgement rather than drafting hours. Policy stacks and posture reviews are scoped as fixed packages. For ongoing advisory (fundraise prep, supplier negotiations, regulatory correspondence), we offer a monthly retainer. When a regulated specialist is needed, their fees are separate and quoted by them directly; we do not mark them up and we take no referral commission.

Both. We draft and tailor commercial contracts (services agreements, NDAs, consultancy terms, supplier terms, reseller and partner agreements) and the full policy stack a UK SME or scale-up needs: privacy notice, cookies, website terms, acceptable use, employee handbook, data retention, subject access procedure. Drafting is done at senior level, in plain English, fitted to how your business actually operates rather than copied from a template library. Where drafting strays into regulated territory (for example, a specific FCA disclosure, a complex IP assignment for litigation, or bespoke employment tribunal settlement wording), we hand the pen to a panel specialist and review their output commercially.