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OUTSOURCED GENERAL COUNSEL

The legal function, without the hire

Named SRA-regulated solicitors covering contracts, employment, data protection, disputes, and governance, for a fixed monthly fee agreed in advance. You get the breadth of an in-house legal department, without the overhead.

Fixed monthly fee icon Fixed monthly fee SRA-regulated solicitors icon SRA-regulated solicitors Moves at your pace icon Moves at your pace
  • ComplyCube
  • Athona
  • Virgin
  • Kaikaku
  • City Contractors
  • Osmo
  • Global Tech
  • Simply smarter
  • LSET
  • Restoreo
  • Bathlettings
  • Beagle
  • Pantheon Properties
THE LEGAL SUPPORT CHALLENGE

The economics of a general counsel

At a certain scale, legal work stops being occasional and becomes constant. Each of the usual answers carries a cost that is easy to underestimate.

Good legal work is commercial first. Not a list of risks, but a read on what the business is trying to do and how to get it there with the least friction.

David Silvey

Legal Service Director, Lawyerly

Portrait photo
A full-time general counsel A six-figure commitment and months to recruit, with one person holding contracts, employment, data protection, disputes and governance at once. When they are away, the function pauses with them.
A fractional general counsel Solves the cost, but still rests on one person working part of the week. Depth in one area comes at the expense of breadth in the rest, and the single point of failure remains.
An external firm on the clock Bills by the hour, one matter at a time, with a cost that cannot be planned. Nobody holds the whole picture, so the same context is paid for again with every instruction.
Legal held by the finance director In many businesses the work lands on a founder, finance director or COO between other jobs. Decisions are taken without advice, and the risk only shows when something goes wrong.

The Lawyerly model

How the engagement works

With Lawyerly, the legal function goes from challenge to advantage. Your dedicated senior solicitor works ahead of the business, so legal becomes part of your strategic direction rather than a cost you manage.

A named lead solicitor

One senior solicitor who builds a working knowledge of your business and how it makes decisions, and stays in place. Our solicitors are employed, not freelance, so that continuity is structural rather than a promise.

Specialist depth behind them

When a matter calls for an employment specialist or a data protection lead, the right solicitor takes it on under your lead's direction. You keep the breadth no single appointment can give you.

A fixed monthly fee

Agreed in advance under the Enterprise plan. No hourly billing, so nobody weighs the cost of a question before asking it.

Full visibility

Every matter is tracked in the Client Hub, so you always know what is open, what is progressing and who is acting on it, with a monthly board report to match.

SERVICE SCOPE

The work you can hand over

The breadth and consistency of an in-house legal team, without building one. Everything below is included in the Enterprise plan.

  • Everyday legal advice

    Unlimited day-to-day advice across the business. Ask as often as you need, without the call ending in an invoice.

  • NDAs & digital terms

    NDAs, website terms, platform terms, and data processing agreements.

  • Commercial contracts

    Drafting, reviewing and negotiating customer, supplier and service agreements.

  • Employment law & HR

    Contracts, policies, grievances, disciplinaries and redundancy support.

  • Shareholder & founder agreements

    Founder and shareholder agreements covering vesting, transfers and exit provisions.

  • Corporate governance

    Articles, directors' service agreements and ongoing corporate housekeeping.

  • Privacy & compliance

    Data protection documentation, compliance frameworks and breach guidance.

  • IP & trade marks

    UK trade mark searches, filings and brand protection. One filing fee included.

  • Commercial leases

    Leases up to three years in-house; longer leases with specialist property counsel, managed by your lead.

  • Dispute resolution

    Pre-action advice, letters before action and settlement negotiation.

  • Debt recovery

    Letters of demand, recovery strategy and enforcement of payment terms.

  • Proactive legal planning

    Regular legal reviews to surface risk early and align legal work with business priorities.

Client spotlight: Virgin Experience Days

One legal team for every experience

Our work for Virgin Experience Day spans every department, which means we see their business as a whole rather than as a series of isolated legal questions. That perspective is precisely what allows our work to be consistent and commercial.
Lawyerly Legal Service Director Patricia Tinn
Contracts at scale Supplier, partner and customer agreements kept moving.
Employment & IP Day-to-day advice plus protection for the brand behind the experiences.
Legal spend management We brief, instruct and oversee specialists, so hours stay lean.
THE LAWYERLY DIFFERENCE

How Lawyerly compares

There are three broad ways to hold a legal function at scale: hire a general counsel, in full or fractionally; instruct a firm by the hour; or appoint an outsourced general counsel. Each has a real strength. Only one gives you breadth, continuity, a fixed cost and a team that works ahead of you.

The alternatives
No,
Cost Salary or retainer, plus the overheads of a hire
No,
Depth One lawyer across every area
No,
Continuity One person; when they are away, so is the function
Yes,
Commercial context Embedded, full time or part time
No,
Visibility Meetings and reports, as arranged
No,
Cost Hourly, billed matter by matter
No,
Depth Specialists, but you coordinate them
No,
Continuity A different associate on each matter
No,
Commercial context Outside your commercial context
No,
Visibility Invoice narratives and progress updates
The Lawyerly way
Your outsourced general counsel
Yes,
Cost One fixed monthly fee, agreed in advance
Yes,
Depth A named lead with specialists behind them
Yes,
Continuity Employed solicitors, so the function never pauses
Yes,
Commercial context Works ahead of the business, inside your decisions
Yes,
Visibility Every matter live in the Client Hub, with a monthly board report

No engagement letters. No clock running.

I spent years as in-house counsel. Legal works best when it sits with the business, not across the table from it.

David Silvey

Legal Service Director

IN PRACTICE

Accountable to your board, alongside your advisers

Every Enterprise plan includes a monthly board report and a live Client Hub. The board sees every open matter, who is acting on it and where it stands. Advice given and decisions taken sit in a complete record, ready for the board pack. That audit trail holds across solicitors and across matters, so the line of sight your board relies on does not break when personnel or scope change.

Most established businesses already work with a specialist firm for the matters outside an everyday legal function: court advocacy, major transactions, sector regulation, anything beyond England and Wales. An Enterprise plan does not replace that. We hold the everyday work and your specialist firm holds the dedicated briefs. Your named lead becomes the institutional memory across both, briefing the firm with full context, reviewing its work commercially and coordinating when more than one adviser is involved.

The Enterprise plan

Your everyday legal function, on a fixed monthly fee

Established businesses take the Enterprise plan: a dedicated senior solicitor, specialist depth across every service area and a monthly board report, for a fixed monthly fee agreed in advance. Book a complimentary consultation and we will set out how it would work for your business.

30-day money-back guarantee
Established businesses

Enterprise

Ideal for businesses that need the output of a legal department, with senior judgement, without the headcount. Typically £5m to £10m turnover.

£1,579 £1,421

per month + VAT

Save £1,895/yr
What’s included
  • Unmetered everyday legal advice
  • Unlimited  No limit on the number of matters in your subscription year, subject to fair use and our terms.
  • A dedicated senior solicitor and commercial associate
  • Pre-action disputes  When something escalates, your solicitor assesses your position, takes over the correspondence, responds to threats and claims, and runs the matter through to settlement. Where a matter needs to go to court, we introduce a specialist litigator, brief them properly, and stay on as your day-to-day legal contact.
  • All lease agreements  Leases up to 3 years are handled by your dedicated solicitor. For longer leases we brief specialist property counsel, manage the process end to end, and contribute up to £1,200 towards their fees per lease. Anything above that is agreed with you upfront.
  • Monthly proactive legal review
  • Free trade mark registration  We cover the official UK Intellectual Property Office fee for one trade mark application in one class each year. You can file more, you just pay the IPO fee on the rest.
  • We work alongside your specialists  When a matter needs a specialist, whether that's litigation, a transaction, tax, or patents, you don't have to run them yourself.
  • 30% off fixed-fee projects
COMMON QUESTIONS

The questions people usually ask

Straight answers on how an outsourced general counsel works, what it covers and how we charge.

An outsourced general counsel gives a business the role a general counsel would fill, without employing one. At Lawyerly that means a named senior solicitor who leads your legal function, specialist solicitors behind them for employment, data protection and the other areas as they arise, and a fixed monthly fee under the Enterprise plan. The work, the advice and the record of decisions sit in the Client Hub, with a monthly report for your board.

Immediately. After an initial consultation, you are set up on the Client Hub the same day, where identity and compliance checks are completed in minutes. Your named lead solicitor then starts by building a legal strategy with you and mapping out the work, so the plan is taking shape from the first week.

For the everyday legal function, yes. We hold contracts, employment, data protection, governance and day-to-day advice, with specialist depth behind your named lead. What we do not do is reserved work such as court litigation and advocacy, or law outside England and Wales. Some clients keep a specialist firm for those briefs, and your lead coordinates with them.

The Enterprise plan starts at £1,579 per month plus VAT, agreed in advance. The fee reflects the breadth and pace of work the plan is calibrated for, not a clock. There is no hourly billing, and no charge for emails, calls or short queries.

The work does not stop with them. Because every matter is recorded in the Client Hub with a full audit trail, another solicitor can pick it up with the context already in front of them. Continuity is the point of the model, not an exception to it.

Your data is handled under our privacy policy and in line with UK GDPR. Where we process personal data on your behalf, our data processing addendum sets out what we process and why, and we maintain a list of subprocessors.

Our solicitors are bound by the SRA Code of Conduct and by professional confidentiality. We run conflict checks before taking on any new work, and if a conflict arises we tell you and manage it under our professional obligations.

Our solicitors are individually regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and bound by its Code of Conduct, and we carry professional indemnity insurance covering their work. Lawyerly itself is not an SRA-authorised firm, which is the modern legal services model the SRA introduced in 2019. The solicitors who deliver your work remain personally accountable to the same professional standards.

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS

What our clients say about working with us

4.8 on Google

A fresh approach. Exceptional value.

A fresh approach to legal services. They've guided us through multiple planned and reactive cases for our business. Exceptional turnaround times and great value for money.

Kerry Power Client Relations, Pantheon Property Services
TALK TO US

Ready to hand over the legal function?

Book a complimentary consultation with one of our founders. We will look at how legal work is handled in your business today, where the gaps are, and how an Enterprise plan would take it on.

Willem van der Merwe

Co-Founder