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Are your packages inclusive of everything? Are there hidden charges?
No, there are no hidden charges. We require clients to sign an engagement letter with us and pay the first month upfront. We will send clients an invoice for the relevant package pricing 10 days before the expiry of the first month and subsequent months and that is all our clients have to pay.
We will not bill our clients printing charges, photocopy charges, taxi claims, disbursements or GST as we aim to be 100% transparent.
The only additional charges that may arise are IDD teleconferencing calls that you require us to make as well as a fixed surcharge of $2,000 a day for overseas assignments (due to cancellation and loss of walk-in customers).
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Can my management interview your legal counsel first before engaging your services?
As we are an external service provider, we are unable to grant interviews.
You may engage our services for one month and if you are not completely satisfied you may terminate our engagement after the first month with one week’s notice.
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Does your legal counsel have experience in in-house legal work?
Our legal counsel practiced corporate and commercial law at Lee & Lee during his entire working career and is experienced in mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, debt capital markets, employment law, funds and general corporate.
He is currently practising corporate and commercial law at his own boutique law firm under the name and style of Lavocat Law LLC. During his tenure at Lavocat Law, Ben has assisted his corporate clients with litigation matters in the State Courts and Supreme Court.
He is familiar with in-house legal work from his secondment to one of Singapore’s largest property developers during his career at Lee & Lee and has performed outsourced in-house legal work for our existing clients.
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What is your legal counsel’s scope of work?
Our legal counsel will perform day to day duties expected of an in-house legal counsel including review of contracts and legal documents, drafting of contracts and legal documentation, and giving legal advice to the various departments in your company.
However, like all other in-house legal counsels, our legal counsel will not be able to engaged in litigation or major capital markets transactions, which are traditionally performed by external specialist lawyers.
However, our legal counsel will liaise and co-ordinate with the external specialist lawyers to ensure smooth liaison between your company and the external lawyers.
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I am interested in your high volume unlimited package. Is the service really unlimited?
The unlimited service in our high volume and SGX-ST packages is unlimited to the extent of the workload being reasonable.
We understand that legal work by its nature fluctuates day to day - there will be days where our legal counsel will spend longer hours attending to your company and some days where our services are not required.
We are very flexible with the hours spent on clients who have paid for unlimited packages and expect to devote a reasonable amount of time for our clients who pay for unlimited packages.
However, in the event that the workload becomes unreasonably excessive on a daily or frequent basis such that our legal counsel is unable to attend to other clients, we reserve the right to negotiate for a higher fee or terminate the engagement.
In our honest opinion, if your company is very large and the workload is excessive, you would be better served by hiring full time legal counsel.
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What happens when your legal counsel goes away on medical leave?
Our legal counsel does not “take MC” and attends to clients seven days a week.
In the unlikely once-in-a-decade event that he is hospitalised, we will notify clients and give a credit note for the pro rata number of days he is unavailable.
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Can you assist clients that already have in-house counsel?
Definitely! The Corporate Counsel can provide assistance on an as needs basis such as:
- for specific projects.
- to supplement and support an under-resourced/staffed in-house legal department.
- provide assistance when a member of a legal team is on extended leave.
