How Can You Reduce Your Organization’s Legal Costs Without Compromising? (Part 2)

Throughout their lifetime, companies needed legal assistance. From organizing a legal entity to defending a contract, lawyers can keep businesses running smoothly. Business owners need to be aware of where legal advice is most needed. If you only consult a lawyer when there is a legal problem, you may miss out on the many benefits of protecting your business with legal representation. Sometimes legal costs discourage business owners from working with appropriate legal support. To protect your business, we will address practical ways to reduce your company’s legal costs. Let’s check them out! Don’t forget to read the first part of this article for the complete list of ways!

Conventional Legal advice Models: Earlier Companies used to appoint independent lawyers and pay them separately for consultations, settling legal documents, legal documentation, and appearance in various Courts and tribunals. This model gives surprises, and financial strain to the Companies since the expenses under legal heads are neither predetermined nor pre-budgeted. Therefore, to reduce the cost of legal services, companies have chosen to offer low quality and unprofessional legal services, which has led them to lose cases, etc.,

Appointing In-House Counsel or Law Officers:

Some companies choose to appoint their own in-house counsel or law officers to handle the above said legal matters. The appointment of in-house counsel or law officers may improve the situation but will not lead to the complete solution for the following reasons:

• Appointing experienced law officers is very expensive in the current salary market. Hence small, medium companies and professionals can afford only a newly graduated or less experienced in-house counsel. Such a less experienced person may be doing only the coordination work between independent lawyers and the company.
• Even if experienced people are appointed, they will have their expertise in a few fields of Law only. Hence, they need to consult independent lawyers on the other issues. Independent consultation is again an expensive matter, and finding the correct lawyer is a challenging job.

Appointing Independent Lawyers as Consultants: Law is a multifaceted field that is growing with each passing day. There are so many Law and Hence divisions, so no lawyer can claim that they are aware of all the Law divisions. Moreover, independent lawyers will not ensure the high quality of service due to limitations in infrastructure, facilities, staff, etc.

Advantages of Legal Retainer-Ship

Even though there are many advantages for the small, medium industries, Professional organizations, hospitals, educational institutions, NGOs, charitable institutions, etc., in following the legal retainer-ship model than the conventional legal adviser model, the following are the important ones,

• Legal advice on multiple legal subjects from experts under one roof
• Unlimited non-litigation services
• Litigation services on a particular fee schedule
• Annual customized fixed fee for unlimited consultation and documentation services
• Dedicated lawyer for each client
• E-document facility
• Periodical reporting about the pending matters

Who Will Be Benefited from the Legal Retainer-Ship Model?

Large companies may appoint their own team of experienced in-house counsel supported by law officers and paralegal staff, given their higher volume of legal work. They also engage big-size law firms and pay for each service separately because they may not bother about the legal expenditure. But the following types of Companies and Institutions will be significantly benefited by the legal retainer-ship model,

• Medium and small size companies
• Distributing Companies & Agencies
• Hospitals
• Private educational institutions
• Schools & Colleges
• FDI partners
• BPOs and Call centers
• NGOs and charity organizations
• Professionals & Consultants etc.,

In short legal retainer, the ship is helpful for those organizations who are not interested in spending money for legal departments or permanent legal counsel of every practice area of Law.