Truelegal is proud to be a founder member of “Spectrum”, an innovative group of specialist law firms, each one dedicated to a specific area of law.  Spectrum’s ethos is to bring together lawyers who are practical, commercial and highly experienced in their chosen field.

Our members focus on providing exceptional service to businesses nationwide at a highly competitive cost.

This is an Insider’s Guide written by Martin Truman, a solicitor who has worked in the legal sector for 15 years.  Here’s the contents page to give you a flavour of what he has to tell you:

Introduction

When should you use a business lawyer?

Finding the right lawyer
# Tip 1 Where to look?
# Tip 2 What to consider?

Questions to ask
# Tip 3 Preparation for the first meeting
# Tip 4 Expertise and Experience – Honesty and straight-forwardness
# Tip 5 Costs
# Tip 6 Agree a timescale
# Tip 7 Communication
# Tip 8 Technology
# Tip 9 Risk and analysis
# Tip 10 People
# Tip 11 Lawyer’s or Law firm’s style and personality
# Tip 12 Scope of work, assistance and advice
# Tip 13 Confidentiality, legal privilege and conflicts of interest
# Tip 14 Complaints and client satisfaction
# Tip 15 Balance, perspective, perfection and the bigger picture

Download Now… To download your free copy of “How to find the right solicitor”:  Click Here.

What type of solicitor and size firm is right for you?

Who are we? The team at Truelegal is a happy blend of generalist-specialist solicitors, lawyers with experience of running their own businesses. Commercial and entrepreneurial business people, but with legal training and qualifications.

Truelegal’s lawyers aspire to give balanced advice, that’s to say: specialist business legal 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”…

We’ve heard it said that:

“A generalist is one who knows 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.”

As a commercial legal practice to entrepreneurs and business owners Truelegal offers 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
• corporate (eg buying and selling companies, mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, restructuring, due diligence)
• business start ups/business migration/path to IPO (eg company formation, company secretarial, shareholder agreements, share options)
• 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)
• employment/consultancy/contractor law

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.

At Truelegal, we 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.

Learn what we do and what we don’t…

We do :

• work nationally, although predominantly in the London, the South East, Midlands and South West of England
• remote work: 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

But 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

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.co.uk (.biz  .com .tv and .info) are trading tools of Truelegal Solicitors, a law firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Our main office is at 76 Fore Street, Topsham, Exeter EX3 0HQ England. We are VAT registered: GB/754820913.  The proprietor and principal solicitor is Martin Truman.

The use of this website and the information contained within it, including the free downloads and free guidance, are provided on a no liability basis and do not constitute specific legal advice. No lawyer-client relationship is created. We believe the information contained on our site is correct; however, we do not accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies, loss or damage unless we have given you, personally, specific advice relating to a matter about which you have given us full background details. The information supplied on this website is based on English law. Aspects of this information may become out-of-date due to changes in the law or how the courts interpret the law since the date of first publication on our website.

Truelegal is a firm of solicitors offering commercial legal advice. If your issue is not within our commercial expertise we will endeavour to source advice from third party law firms who specialise in the area of law you require. When we do this you will be notified and receive from us the name of the partner firm responding to your question. No matter who is dealing with your question these terms and conditions will apply. If you subsequently choose to appoint a solicitor (Truelegal or a third party law firm) you will receive an engagement letter from that firm setting out the basis on which you are engaging them.

The website contents, its format and the free guidance are Copyright © Truelegal Solicitors 2000-2010. As authors of the material we reserve full moral rights. All rights reserved. You may print out or use copies of our materials for your own use or for non-commercial purposes. Any other use requires our express written permission.

Privacy Policy

We dislike spam and unsolicited mail and contact as much as you! At Truelegal we are committed to safeguarding the privacy and confidentiality of our customer data when you visit or submit requests. We are registered under the Data Protection Act 1998 (registered number Z5345790), and all your data is held, collected and used in compliance. More information on privacy can be found at www.dataprotection.gov.uk.

All customer data – including the problems you ask for guidance on – is held in strictest confidence. Unless you have provided us with express consent to do so, we never provide your personally identifiable data to any third party, other than where we release it to a third party for the purposes of providing you with legal information, guidance or advice, or for credit control purposes. Like any business we may contact you to tell you about any special offers, initiatives or promotions which Truelegal thinks you might be interested in. If you want to be taken off this mailing list just let us know by contacting us by any of the methods listed on our contact page.

Anonymous information may be collected from visitors to our website, for example, the number of visitors, which pages they visited and for how long.

… understands your online (and offline) legal needs?
… charges sensible non-London rates?
… speaks German?
… meets you in London, Luton Airport, Lympstone, Leipzig or Linz?
… assists you with non-legal business migration requirements?

Martin Truman has advised a number of German speaking clients on UK legal matters.  He is a previous Chairman of the German British Chamber of Commerce in the South West of England.

Mixing the legal withthe commercial to add most value to a business. The advice might be: “The law is this, the strict consequences of doing that are X, in practice Y is what is likely to happen.”

We don’t cover every area of law and don’t aspire to either.  The following areas of business law are core to our practice:

• “internet/web/e-law” (eg website terms and conditions, branding, hosting, licensing, partnering, e-commerce, staff email policy, data protection/privacy, payment gateway, security)
• commercial and licensing (eg intellectual property, supply, distribution and agency agreements)
• commercial property (eg new leases, lease assignments, property finance, development)
• corporate (eg mergers, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures, restructuring, due diligence)
• business start ups/business migration/path to IPO (eg company formation, company secretarial, shareholder agreements, share options)
• employment/consultancy law
• other: no law firm can specialise in every subject. If Truelegal 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.
  
  

We have particularly strong links in property, tax and litigation. We have also developed a network of other contacts outside the law. For example, if you are outside the UK from Germany, we can put you in touch with German speaking English accountants or assist you in liaising with English banks, chambers of commerce or property agents.

Internet technology and a desire to establish and operate an independent e-legal practice dictated a move out of London by Truelegal’s  founder back in 2000. We advise London and international clients from a base in South West England. Truelegal comes to you the client – we can meet you in London or at the airport or at your head office or UK subsidiary. We use today’s online and remote working technology to ensure that quality advice can be given from anywhere.

One of Truelegal’s niches area is advising German, Austrian and Swiss businesses operating or planning to operate in the UK. Truelegal offers the client a personal relationship with advice tailored to non-UK natives, with explanation in the German language if necessary.

We correspond with the majority of our clients by telephone and email (subject always to obtaining the client’s consent to the use of and acceptance of the risks associated with email). We believe this ensures the closest and most responsive contact with clients in today’s environment. Where appropriate we establish a secure extranet link with the client to share common “deal” documents. Email document attachments and electronic mark ups are our bread and butter. Sensitive documents can be encrypted. Due diligence documents may be scanned.

We cultivate a limited number of deep client relationships, allowing a closer and more intense working relationship. We like to be seen by the client as the equivalent of a “contracted-out but in-house” lawyer.

Competitive rates: quality legal advice will rarely come cheaply. With sterling’s current strength against the euro many clients are quickly recognising that they are being priced out of an increasingly expensive London legal market with hourly rates frequently in excess of £400. Truelegal is your alternative value for money solution. Our remote email/teleworking operating style 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.

Although English lawyers have traditionally worked on an hourly basis, we are happy to discuss 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.

Founder and principal Martin Truman – a fluent German speaker – studied law in England and Germany, graduating with an LLB (Euro) degree at Exeter University in 1992. He qualified as an English solicitor and for four years worked 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.

English law advice to non-UK business owners

Truelegal advises non-UK clients about doing business in England and Wales.  We can be flexible taking calls to suit your time zone outside core UK business hours

A German-speaking solicitor

We are also able to coordinate cost effective Anglo-German business and legal translations.  Email us for a quote.