Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Every client has a director who is responsible for their account management and will usually carry out the majority of the work for the client. The proportion of senior people in our business is much higher than our competitors, which means that you will usually have a far more experienced lawyer carrying out your work.

Our time spent in-house at organisations revealed that most lawyers are terrible at account management. So we wanted to enshrine good account management into our business from the beginning.

You will not be passed around lots of different lawyers, having to explain your business to each one. Typically our clients work with one or two of our people.

Our philosophy to account management is no surprises. We are up front about costs and we report regularly against estimates. We do not exceed estimates without discussing this with our clients.

We work with both. Historically we have done slightly more work with suppliers, from SMEs to Tier 1 multinational outsourcers. However, the user side is catching up and with clients in a range of sectors from F&C Asset Management and others in financial services to homebuilder Crest Nicholson, racetrack Silverstone and charities such as Oxfam.

We adhere firmly to the Law Society's rules and guidance on conflict issues. Given the small size of the practice, the firm does not purport to be able to use mechanisms such as "Chinese walls" to deal with conflict issues, and this does mean that we sometimes have to decline instructions from our clients. If any conflict or potential conflict is identified, then this will be promptly communicated to the client.

As we are a UK law firm we are only qualified to practice under the law of England and Wales. However, we are often involved in international projects such and we have established a network of similar firms in key overseas jurisdictions to provide local law advice where required. Our directors regularly attend international conferences to maintain these connections as well as visiting international clients.

Our lawyers have an extensive amount of experience on public sector transactions, from Jeremy Newton's period in-house at the Treasury to Gavin Wakefield's work on the Aspire project for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The Office of Government Commerce selected us for the IT section of the Catalist panel for legal services. www.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk

We use online updating services (we are technology lawyers after all) and our people regularly attend and talk at seminars and events on the latest developments in our area of the law.

Absolutely. We have a large number of SME clients and we are able to offer them access to top quality expertise at a reasonable cost. We usually carry out work for SMEs on a fixed price basis. It is hugely satisfying to us when we see one of our smaller clients grow.

We have worked hard to establish a network of specialist advisers that can assist our clients with associated areas such as employment law and corporate law. This approach means we have the pick of the legal market. We can recommend the very best advisers, rather than being restricted to using colleagues.

Although our total staff numbers are smaller than the majority of our competitors, we have as many dedicated technology lawyers as most large firms. Many of these firms will boast of huge numbers of lawyers but their specialist teams are often lacking the experience we can offer.