Our Approach :: Our Credentials :: Our Services :: Our Charges
Introduction
The Legal Advice Centre is a trading style and resource of Truelegal Solicitors.
In a nutshell, Truelegal is a nationwide business law firm focusing on English corporate, commercial and web law, and foreign businesses operating or planning to operate in the UK.
As with any other law firm, we are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our professional body has a raft of rules and regulations designed to protect you the client – so you can be sure that if you pay for our services as a client you get the full protection. This includes substantial compulsory professional indemnity insurance. You can find out more here: www.sra.org.uk.
When reviewing other “Legal Information” and “Legal Document” sites on the web be sure to check whether they are provided by a solicitors firm. Most aren’t, and so can’t offer you the same protection.
So what sets us apart from traditional law firms?
Most law firms like to say that they’re different but, in reality, they’re not: they have similar offices, similar standards of client service, similar policies and procedures and similar ways of managing their people.
At Truelegal, we have come to recognise that if we really want to distinguish ourselves from the competition, we have to create a way of doing legal business that responds to the changing needs of our clients, rather than what is normal in the industry.
Consequently, we don’t :
- have expensive, smart offices
- use unqualified paralegals or inexperienced solicitors to complete client work
- employ a whole raft of practice management, marketing and administrative staff in our business
- measure the performance of our solicitors exclusively by the profit they generate.
But we do:
- work nationally, although predominantly in the London, the South East, Midlands and South West of England.
- telework: we use today’s online and remote working technologies to correspond and communicate with our clients and each other by telephone and email, ensuring that quality advice can be given from anywhere
- have only a small and very practical management team, and we outsource non-legal services where possible
- use only senior solicitors with at least 5 years commercial legal expertise
- measure the performance of our solicitors by the value they add to the client’s business.
Which means you benefit from:
- direct access to no-nonsense, practical advice from specialist senior solicitors – why should you put up with an initial meeting with a partner and then be fobbed off on a junior or trainee?
- a flexible and responsive personal working relationship – a single point of contact
- competitive charging as a result of our reduced overheads – you won’t be paying for fresh flowers, expensive biscuits or city centre rent
- our lawyers visiting your office, studio, factory or business – when we feel face-to-face contact is key
Truelegal’s innovative approach and willingness to change does not come at the expense of our values and principles. Our aim is simple: to leave our clients better off than when we first met them. For us, a job is successfully completed when our client’s position has improved as a result of our input, not when we have sent out the bill and closed the file.
Key to this is the need to provide a consistently high quality service and build a close business rapport with each of our clients. That means we prefer to foster a limited number of more personal client relationships, so that we can develop a closer and more synergistic working relationship. We make sure that we take the time to really listen and understand your objectives before advising on a solution. Our clients come to regard us as their “in-house” lawyer – which is not something a client wants from a divorce or conveyancing solicitor, but should from a commercial one.
Whilst sound financial management is important – and we expect to receive fair value for our services, as would any other business – it is not what drives our performance. We believe it is how we treat the people around us, our clients, our potential clients and ourselves that sets us apart from other law firms.
Truelegal has five years under its belt as an independent law firm. Our claims record and personalised service is exemplary.
Born out of a frustration with the manner in which certain clients were being over-charged or under-delivered to by traditional law firms, Truelegal, and now The Legal Advice Centre, were conceived to deal with this “latent” legal market.
Truelegal’s founder and principal Martin Truman – studied law in England and Germany, graduating with an LLB (Euro) degree at Exeter University. He qualified as an English solicitor and began his career with the international city law firm, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. This included secondments to the firm’s Frankfurt office and the London legal department of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the international investment bank. Martin also worked in the corporate department and German unit of London law firm, Fladgate Fielder.
Martin has assembled a team of commercial experts with similar values and solid legal CVs, usually with that little bit extra thrown in. Our team is committed to flexible working, maximum use of technology and outsourcing, and they are, without exception, down-to-earth “real” people.
“Happy lawyers give better advice!”
Our focus and experience (all of our solicitors have at least 5 years commercial law experience) means that we are able to provide you with an exceptional level of service and workable solutions that make commercial sense.
Who are we: commercial and entrepreneurial business people, but with legal training. The team behind The Legal Advice Centre is a happy blend of generalist-specialist legal advisers, many of whom have run their own business. We’ve heard it said that:
“A generalist is one who know less and less about more and more,
until he knows nothing about everything.
A specialist is one who knows more and more about less and less
until he knows everything about nothing.”
Truelegal’s lawyers aspire to give balanced advice, that’s to say: specialist advice without losing sight of the bigger picture. If one can be critical of mainstream law firms too often the over-specialisation of their lawyers means that the lawyer’s advice misses the obvious commercial angle having immersed him or herself in the detail and not communicated with other specialists in the firm. And we haven’t even talked about the departmental “turf wars”…
As a commercial legal practice to business owners we offer advice and commercial solutions in the following areas of business law:
- commercial (eg contracts, intellectual property, supply, distribution and agency agreements)
- commercial property: commercial leases (including lease assignments, lease surrenders) and freehold
- business start ups/business migration/path to IPO (eg company formation, company secretarial, shareholder agreements, share options)
- corporate (eg mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, restructuring, due diligence)
- employment/consultancy/contractor law
- internet, web and e-law” (eg website terms and conditions, branding, hosting, licensing, partnering, e-commerce, staff email policy, data protection/privacy, payment gateway, security)
Have you found the area of commercial law you were looking for? No law firm can (should?) specialise in every subject. The above are examples. If we cannot advise you directly, we will find you a suitable expert, manage your relationship with that firm and ensure that any language and cultural barriers are broken down.
Quality legal advice will rarely come cheaply. Many commercial businesses are quickly recognising that they are being priced out of an increasingly expensive London legal market with hourly rates frequently in excess of £600. Truelegal provides an alternative value for money solution. Our remote email and teleworking operating style and decentralised approach means that overheads can be kept to a minimum allowing “London advice” to be given at a considerable discount to London hourly charge out rates.
In addition, although English lawyers have traditionally worked on an hourly basis, our focus is on selling value rather than time. Where the scope of the work can be sufficiently specified, we actively encourage alternative arrangements such as a retainer, a fixed fee per job, or (where applicable) a percentage, conditional or success fee or, exceptionally, an equity stake.
