Written for the person who has to decide.
No client alerts, no case digests. The maths behind a decision, and what we would do about it.
Your first employee outside the UK
The offer is agreed and the only question left looks administrative: how do we pay them? It is not administrative, and the contract you have used for every UK hire has stopped doing the job.
When does a founder-led business need a holding company?
One company works for years, until a raise, a second business line or a departing co-founder makes it the wrong shape. A holding company solves a specific set of problems well, and several others not at all.
When a Customer Will Not Pay: Recovering a B2B Debt in the UK
Ninety days late, no reply, and a growing suspicion that chasing it costs more than it is worth. The order you do things in decides whether you get paid.
Who Owns the Code Your Contractors Wrote?
Most founders assume paying for work means owning it. In UK law that is true of employees and false of contractors, and the gap usually surfaces in diligence.
The first ninety days after a seed round closes
The wire clears and the congratulations arrive. Underneath them sits a list of obligations that started running the day the documents were signed, and most of it lands on the founder.
Can a housing association sue you for building safety defects years later?
The Building Safety Act reopened claims most contractors had written off as time-barred. Thirty years is not a typographical error, and the corporate structure that used to absorb the risk no longer does.
Branded residences in Dubai: the questions a UK hotel group should answer first
The brand is the asset, and a branded residences deal is the moment you hand it to somebody else's building for twenty years. These are the questions worth settling before the term sheet.
Your First In-House Lawyer After a PE Buy-In: What the Job Spec Doesn't Say
When a private equity sponsor backs a healthcare business and creates a Head of Legal role reporting to the CFO, the job spec is usually the smallest part of the job. Here's what to scope before that person starts — and how to cover the gap until they do.
What an In-House Lawyer Really Costs in the UK
Salary is the number on the offer letter. It is not the number that lands on the P&L. Here is the arithmetic a founder needs before signing off a first legal hire.
Can You Appeal an Energy Ombudsman Decision?
There is no appeal button inside the Energy Ombudsman scheme. What you have instead is a choice — accept, or reject and go elsewhere — and the deadline for making it is shorter than most people think.
UK Company Opening in Dubai: The Legal Checklist Nobody Gives You
Setting up in Dubai isn't a single registration step — it's a sequence of decisions that each close off the next one. Sam Ansloos sets out the order they actually arrive in, and where a specialist has to take over.
Which Entity Signs the Contract? The Question That Decides UK–UAE Disputes
In a UK–UAE group, the name on the signature block is not administrative detail. It decides which court or tribunal can hear a dispute, whether a judgment can be enforced, and which tax authority takes an interest.
Business Energy Billing Dispute: The Escalation Route That Actually Works
A wrong energy bill rarely gets fixed by ringing the supplier again. There's a sequence — complaint, deadlock, ombudsman, recovery — and each step has a deadline that, missed, closes the door on the last one.
Served a Winding-Up Petition? What Hospitality Operators Need to Do in the First 7 Days
A winding-up petition is not a stern letter to be filed with the invoices. It can freeze the bank account within days and put the business in front of a liquidator within weeks — and most of what can be done about it has to happen in the first week.
When to Hire a General Counsel: The Maths at 30, 100 and 300 Staff
Founders usually ask the general counsel question at the wrong moment — either long after a redundancy round has gone wrong, or far too early, when a single hire can't justify its own salary. Here is where the maths actually turns, staff count by staff count.
First Legal Hire for a UK Startup: In-House Lawyer, Retainer, or Outsourced GC?
Founders usually frame this as a choice between hiring someone and finding a law firm. There's a third option most arrive at eventually — an outsourced General Counsel function — and it's worth weighing all three before signing anything.
Fractional General Counsel UK: What It Is and Who It Suits
Founders searching for a fractional General Counsel are usually trying to avoid two bad options: an expensive full-time hire they don't yet need, or a law firm relationship that only turns up when there's a bill attached. Here's what the model actually is.
How to Get People to Pay: Structured Recovery Beats Aggression
Chasing harder rarely collects faster. A fixed escalation calendar, statutory interest applied by default and an honest decision point do — and they cost less.
Business Rates Are a Turnover Tax on Hospitality — How to Run a Challenge That Actually Wins
For pubs, hotels and much of the licensed trade, the rateable value is derived from trade. That makes rates behave like a tax on turnover — payable whether or not the site makes money. Here is how a challenge is won, and what has to be in place before the Challenge button is pressed.
The adjudication you cannot use
Adjudication is the fast lane for getting paid on a build — until it isn't. Four contract facts decide whether the lane is open, and all four are knowable before you serve a notice.
Before you hire a Legal Advisor in Dubai, work out which law your contracts are actually under
UK founders opening a UAE arm keep advertising for an on-site contract administrator. Most of the real exposure is sitting in English-law parent agreements, IP ownership and the licence behind the entity — which makes that a good second hire and a poor first one.
Nobody Ever Wrote Down Who Owns the Company
If your cap table lives in an accountant's spreadsheet and a folder of emailed subscription letters, a co-founder can credibly dispute it. Here is the three-hour audit that tells you whether you are exposed — before anyone falls out.
Where nine per cent of your revenue goes
Contract value rarely leaks in a single expensive event. It leaks quietly, through renewal dates nobody owns.
The letter before action, and what it actually buys you
Most disputes are settled by the quality of the first letter, not by the threat at the end of it.
Free zone or mainland: the question founders ask last
The decision is usually made by whoever incorporated first, then lived with for years.
Your break clause is a deadline, not an option
Most break clauses fail on a condition nobody read, not on a decision anyone took.
What a fully loaded General Counsel actually costs
The comparison is not our fee against an hourly rate. It is our fee against the hire you would otherwise make.