The Legal MOT, or a
Fractional General Counsel?
You can buy “ongoing legal support” at every price from £75 a month to the cost of an in-house lawyer, and from the outside the options blur together. They shouldn’t: underneath the labels there are really three different things you can buy, and knowing which is which makes the choice straightforward. This note explains all three, sets our two products side by side, and gives you a working rule for choosing — including when the honest answer is neither.
What you’re actually buying
Access — the right to ask
Much of the market sells subscriptions: a helpline, a monthly call, template libraries, and discounts on work that is still priced separately. The monthly fee buys availability — when a document actually needs drafting or a dispute handling, that is a further invoice. A gym membership, where the classes cost extra.
Diagnosis — a senior read of where you stand
What our Legal MOT sells: once a year, a barrister with twenty years’ call actually reads your documents and your exposure, and gives you a written report ranked by what to fix first. An inspection with a deliverable — the car MOT, not the servicing plan.
Capacity — the work itself, reserved
What the Fractional General Counsel retainer sells: a block of senior hours each month in which the work is actually done — contracts reviewed and drafted, questions answered the day they arise, disputes triaged. Nothing extra to pay for work inside the block. The personal trainer’s diary, not the gym card.
The Legal MOT — £1,500 first year, £1,000 on renewal
Once a year, we go through the legal footing of your business the way a good mechanic goes through a car. In scope — the standard set: your terms of trade; up to eight core customer and supplier contracts or templates in actual use; the ownership and people documents — shareholders’ agreement, director and key employment contracts; whether the business truly owns its brand and its work; and a sweep of what’s brewing — disputes forming, debts ageing, deadlines approaching.
You get a written report, ranked by what to fix first, and a call to walk it through. What the MOT is not: a helpline, standing advice through the year, or the fixing itself — repairs are separate, quoted from the published fixed-fee list, and entirely in your control. Problems surface on a quiet afternoon, not in the middle of a dispute.
Two notes on the price. The first MOT is £1,500; renewals are £1,000 — the business is known by then, so the check is genuinely quicker. At renewal you can also add year-round access — the MOT plus four scheduled calls across the year and first claim on my diary — for £2,750, a middle rung for a business that wants me reachable without a full retainer. And where the document estate is large, complex or spread across several entities, the review is quoted instead (MOT+, from £2,500) — so the health-check price never quietly does the work of a full contract-review exercise.
The Fractional General Counsel — from £3,000 a month
A general counsel without the salary. A monthly retainer reserves a block of my time — and because the time is already yours, the question gets asked the day it comes up instead of being parked: the contract read before signature, the employment issue taken at the first conversation, the dispute triaged while it is still a letter. I hold context on your business between matters, the way an in-house lawyer would — with the difference that twenty years in independent practice and in court makes: what comes back is a decision and a reason, not a discussion paper.
The more you reserve, the lower the effective rate — and every retainer includes the annual MOT-style review as a matter of course, along with priority diary access and one hearing or advocacy day a year within your reserved hours. All figures exclusive of VAT; billed monthly in advance for an agreed term, with the treatment of unused time set out in your engagement letter.
Side by side
Where the value comes from
- —It catches one fault early. A term that doesn’t bind, a covenant that won’t hold, a key contract that was never signed — any one of these costs multiples of the fee once it surfaces in a dispute. The review exists to find it while it is still cheap to fix.
- —You control every pound after it. The report is ranked, each fix is a published fixed fee, and you choose what to do and when — urgent now, the rest as cash flow suits. Nothing is bundled that you didn’t choose.
- —It compounds. Each year’s review is read against the last by the same counsel — the business gets known, and the check gets sharper.
- —The rate beats the market for the seniority. £233–£300 an hour for twenty-year counsel is below what firms typically charge for a senior solicitor — and the more you reserve, the lower it gets.
- —Asking costs nothing extra. Once the time is reserved, every contract read before signature and every question taken early is money saved later — the expensive problems are almost always the parked ones.
- —The annual review is in the price — and the monthly figure is a single, predictable line in the budget that steps up or down as the business changes.
A working rule for choosing
And the ladder runs both ways. Businesses grow into the retainer from the MOT, and step back down in quieter years, without drama — the two exist so that you are only ever paying for the state your business is actually in. If you are not sure which state that is, that is exactly what the free Initial View is for: tell me what is going on, and I will tell you straight which you need. Sometimes the answer is neither — just one fixed-fee piece of work, or nothing at all yet.
Barraj Legal is a trading style of Rhys Johns, a barrister authorised and regulated by the Bar Standards Board. All fees exclusive of VAT. Retainer and MOT terms are set out in the engagement letter agreed in writing before work begins.