How to Cut Your Organization’s Legal Cost Without Compromise

What is Legal retainer-ship?

In today’s complex legal environment the corporate entities and professionals need to be very careful in all the commercial dealings, communications, agreements and contracts. This is because any communication can be viewed as a contract or not a binding contract by judicial forums in a later stage when litigation reaches courts. These types of communications include appointment letters, suspension letters, removal letters, email communications, statutory notices, reply to notices, warning letters, letters notifying delays, letters expressing disagreements etc., The stakes in every dealing today is also very high. Moreover certain actions have to be taken within a particular time frame otherwise negative inferences can be drawn by the courts in later stages. In such a situation, companies choose to engage a law firm with multi-discipline experience and international exposure to advise them in their day to day legal issues. Such an arrangement helps the companies to get expert advice under one roof in a pre-determined cost for the services what they are going to avail from that firm. Law-Senate law firm is serving many companies on “Annual retainer-ship basis” which helps the companies to get quality legal consultation without worrying about the bills, since the fee is fixed in advance for a year, on the basis of the budgeted work load for all non-litigation work. Later even if the work load increases the determined fee will not be changed within that one year period.

How Law Firm Legal Retainer Ship will facilitate You

There are few facts you must know about Law Senate Legal Retainer Ship, which will clear you why legal retainer ship should be availed:

Un-limited non-litigation legal Service in fixed cost: The Firm agrees on a fixed annual fee for un-limited chamber legal work including consultation, settling of contracts, settling of legal documents, settling of legal communication, labor related documentation, employment related documentation, issuing legal notices, responding to legal notices, arbitration notices, demand notices etc., The Firm has lawyers from various branches of law in its panel and in-house to respond to the consultation requests from the clients on issues arising out of various branches of law. The Firm also allots a dedicated lawyer for ensuring customer friendly communication and effective service. The clients can use email, courier or personal consultation to get their issues resolved. For example in case of settling of legal documentation, the client can email the proposed draft of the document to the firm’s dedicated lawyer. The dedicated lawyer will get the response and comments of the relevant lawyer and inform the client within the pre-fixed time. Hence the specialty of the whole process is the customer friendly, high quality, swift and cost effective administration of the required legal services. The said fixed annual fee is excluding Litigation, arbitration, drafting of contracts and appearance before authorities and tribunals. The above said fixed fee is not uniform for all, it is finalized after estimation of work and the size of the Company.
Litigation & Representation Services in pre-determined fee schedule: The Firm will handle almost all types of litigation, arbitration and appearance before authorities in a predetermined fee schedule on case to case basis. The lawyers of the Firm regularly appear in Supreme Court of India, High courts, Competition Commission of India, Consumer Courts, National Consumer Commission, EPF Appellate Tribunal, Company Law Board, Electricity Tribunal, Mines tribunal, Petroleum tribunal, Civil Courts, Criminal Courts, Central Excise & Tax authorities, Revenue authorities etc., The Firm charges special reduced rates for the clients who engages the firm on annual retainer-ship basis. Hence this arrangement with our firm will help the clients to cut their legal costs.
E-reporting and online storage: It is very difficult for the Companies to get them updated about the pending cases from the old style lawyers. But Law-senate law Firm sends periodical (Weekly/ monthly) reports about the pending cases and matters to each of its client. The Firm also has the facility of e-storage of documents, even in a later stage after many years, the firm can supply copies of the documents from its e-storage points. Since law-senate is a modern law firm with all modern facilities and technology it serves its clients with Zero error quality.
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. Hence the Companies in their endeavor to cut legal costs ended up in low quality and un-professional legal services which resulted in losing of cases etc.,

Appointing in-house counsel or law officers:

To handle above said legal matters some companies choose to appoint their own in-house counsel or law officers. The appointment of in-house counsel or law officers may improve the situation but will not lead to the full 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 co-ordination 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 complex field which is growing every day. There are so-many divisions of law and hence no lawyer can claim that he/she is aware of all the divisions of law. More over independent lawyers will not be able to 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 organisations, 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 special 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 Legal retainer-ship Model?

Large companies may appoint their own team of experienced in-house counsel supported by law officers and para legal staff in view of 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 greatly benefited by legal retainer-ship model,

Medium and small size companies
Distributing Companies & Agencies
Hospitals
Private educational institutions
Schools & Colleges
FDI partners
BPOs and Call centres
NGOs and charity organisations
Professionals & Consultants etc.,
In short legal retainer 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. If you have any query about legal retainer ship then you can ask anytime.

A Simple Product Creation and Product Launching Formula

If you tried to think of people involved in product creation, who would come to mind? You may think of Edison, Franklin, or maybe Henry Ford. Would you ever think of yourself as someone who can create a quality product? Product creation is actually relatively easy and product launching is not that tough either! If you follow a few easy to understand steps, you could be starting the product creation and product launching process sooner than you think.

The first step in creating your information product is to know and understand your market. This can be very time-consuming, especially if you are unsure of what to do or where to look to know your market. Studying your niche market and understanding the buzz words and buying patterns can ease the process dramatically. Personally, I would recommend networking with someone who has had success in the niche market you are considering and learn from their results. If they are into product creation and not very business savvy expect some hesitation. If they only sell products and have nothing to do with product launching or product creation you may your first affiliate (sales person)! Something else you can use to find hot trends is with the Google Trends tool.

The second step is the product creation process. Take your niche market and brainstorm ideas and topics relating to it. There are a lot of product launching contests going on recently relating to a newly created internet marketing tool. There are so many aspects to the mentioned niche that literally, and unfortunately, anything can be considered an Internet Marketing tool. The reason that anyone can basically create an Internet Marketing tool is because of something called Private Label Rights products.

What I use private label rights products for, and highly recommend them in this specific manner, is to cure writer’s block especially when it is lingering. Many people base their entire product creation and product launching on a private label rights product. This is where you can start to shine and build a strong brand for yourself. If you set goals for yourself, short-term goals to be exact, you can see your product creation come into being much faster and there is a good chance with less revision needed. If you keep hitting time restraint road blocks; however there is nothing wrong with a slow and steady approach, you can consider outsourcing portions of your project. Outsourcing can be an extremely huge benefit or just as great of a disaster.

You can find someone to outsource work to at a freelance site such as Guru.com or eLance.com. When reviewing proposals it is almost mandatory you perform a background check on them as you are in essence hiring them. Doing a background check on freelancers is as easy as asking for samples of their work and reviewing feedback on the freelance site from previous customers. Depending on the size and requirements of your project this can add up to a decent sized investment, so caution is very important. One tip I always recommend to people looking to hire an individual is to ask them what they can provide you that no one else can. This simple question gives them a chance to “toot their own horn” and acknowledge where they feel most competent as far as their skill set.

The final portion of the product creation and product launching formula is the launch. This can literally make or break the effort, time, and maybe (if you invested) money you put in to your project. There are numerous aspects to product launching and although their relevance is debated in terms to their effect, experts agree all must be followed. The person in your field who you asked for product advice from can help you substantially if you have kept in touch. If not, the first thing you need to do is to create a visually appealing website with flawless design work.

I also mentioned outsourcing before, this is one aspect of product launching I have little strength in and I always outsource this portion. The website does not have to be large however the content (ad copy in Internet Marketing) must be stellar and as perfect as possible. This is where advertising knowledge or experience is beneficial. When the site is set up you now put a lead capture form on your website.

I put two lead capture pages on all products I create on the internet and is one of the best methods of getting a solid start when you are in the product launching stage. When you gain information from a prospect or someone looking to get paid for referring sales you are able to provide them updates or specials. Many people abuse their prospect or affiliate lists by in turn emailing them with a new product daily and I find the recommendations to be totally unrelated to their original need, problem, or interest.

Another stage in the product launching stage is creating a free report or demo version of your product to entice the product to sign up to your email list. Using proper follow up with this can help generate numerous sales for you. One thing you need to ensure is that your free product completely relates to your main product that you are looking to sell.

You are now ready to advertise your product launching to customers as well as the opportunity to sell for affiliates. This is the single aspect that many product creations and launches fail on. It is actually not entirely difficult. One thing you can do is write articles (and a good amount of them) on topics relating to your product. I am a huge advocate of giving a solution in forums. When you join a forum you are normally offered the opportunity to create a signature. In your signature, you should enter the link to your opt-in or lead capture page. When you respond to posts, you are advertising your opportunity.

It is not impossible to create a product and it does not have to take a long time. You need to setup a plan and stick to it. If you get stuck, look at similar and successful products to your own and try and see how they did it. When you sit down and brainstorm you will be surprised with what you can imagine.

Plan To Succeed With Information Product Creation: Why You Need To Split Your Process Up

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.