Most founders have been on the wrong end of legal advice that was technically correct and commercially useless. Careful, expensive, and no closer to the thing they actually wanted.
This page is what we do instead. It is not a values statement — it is the working method, and you are entitled to hold us to it.
An hourly adviser is paid more when a matter runs long. We are not, and that changes what gets recommended. Where the commercially right answer is to concede a point and close, we will say so — and where it is to hold, we will say that too, and mean it. The advice does not bend to what is billable, because nothing here is.
Every engagement starts by reading what you have actually signed, not what you believe you signed. Most of what goes wrong in a founder-led business is already written down somewhere and nobody has looked at it since the day it was executed. The first week is unglamorous and it is where most of the value is.
We work out what we would do if this went badly before we need to. That means the break date is diarised, the notice period is known, the correspondence is written as though somebody might one day read it back to us, and the file would survive being handed to a litigator. Preparing for a fight is usually how you avoid one.
The first letter is measured, because most counterparties respond to a clear account of the facts and a deadline. If that is ignored, the next step is firmer, and the one after is a formal one. We escalate on a schedule rather than on a mood, we tell you before each step, and we do not make a threat we are not prepared to carry out.
The easy close and the right close are frequently different. We will not accept a worse deal because a matter has become tiring, we will not settle to clear a file, and we will not let a deadline pass because chasing was awkward. If a point is worth having we will keep asking for it, and we will tell you plainly when it is not worth having.
Where a matter needs a regulated specialist — litigation, tax, a filing position — we instruct one, hold the budget, brief them properly and stay accountable for the outcome. You get one relationship rather than four, and nobody bills you for learning your business twice.
Every engagement opens the same way, because the same thing is wrong in almost every founder-led business: the paper stopped being read some time ago, and nobody knows which parts of it are now a problem.
Nobody is served by an adviser who picks fights, and a reputation for being difficult is expensive in a market where the same names keep appearing. So we are straightforward, we answer quickly, and we do not manufacture disputes.
It also means that when a counterparty decides your deadline is optional, or that a signed term can be renegotiated after the fact, they find somebody who has already read the agreement, already diarised the dates, and is entirely comfortable saying no for as long as it takes. The results page is what that has been worth.