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.