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LS Assist

The business community is facing many real and unique challenges in today’s fast-changing world. We understand the pressures you are under and we want to play our part in helping you and your business adapt and thrive. One way in which we’re doing this is by offering you a new and innovative legal service; LS Assist.

LS Assist is designed to provide you with a low cost, fixed fee, high-quality service ensuring you have:

  • Support: with your day-to-day commercial legal needs in a cost-efficient way.
  • Transparency and certainty: as to your regular legal expenditure.
  • Quality: with access to the same high-quality lawyers and advice as you've come to expect from Lewis Silkin.

LS Assist is an extension of our award winning rockhopper Employment service model, which was established in 2014.

I love LS Assist for these quick questions, sometimes I just need some assurance that I’m on the right track!

Hayley Benbow, Head of Compliance & Facilities, Suzuki GB

What does LS Assist offer?

LS Assist is a fixed fee service, there are three key elements:

  • LS Assist Portal: your secure online Portal is our centralised way of engaging with you via LS Assist, providing you with everything you need in one place, including access to the Helpdesk and to the LS Assist Library of helpful documents and precedent contracts.
  • LS Assist Helpdesk: is available via your Portal, for a wide variety of routine, ad hoc commercial queries ranging from red-flag reviews of routine contracts to questions about consumer law.
  • LS Assist Projects: is a bespoke service for larger scale but routine commercial projects, such as the bulk review of a large number of similar agreements or a health check review of all your precedent agreements.

What is the LS Assist Portal?

As an LS Assist client, you will be granted access to a secure online portal tailored to you. Via your LS Assist Portal you can:

  • Access the LS Assist Library: a set of high-quality user-friendly precedent documents including template letters and contracts, and other helpful resources such as checklists and guidance documents.
  • Upload your own precedents and key documents (whether adapted from our LS Assist documents or not) for easy access by your team.
  • Submit LS Assist Helpdesk requests to our team.
  • Revisit answers to your previous Helpdesk queries – all our responses will be logged within your Portal for easy retrieval.
  • Upload documents for review by us in accordance with an LS Assist Projects scope of work.
  • View LS Assist Projects reports we have produced for you.

How does the LS Assist Helpdesk work?

The Helpdesk is designed for general, ad hoc day-to-day commercial law support. Think of it is as your ‘go-to’ for routine commercial legal queries, that you need to outsource in a cost effective way. You simply upload your query to your LS Assist Portal and our pool of LS Assist Commercial team lawyers will respond.

Our service is tailored to you, so we will agree up front what volume and type of work we will service for you via the Helpdesk, but we can support all your routine, non-bespoke commercial legal needs. A typical Helpdesk client will use the service for red-flag reviews of routine contracts, questions about consumer law, help drafting discrete clauses, and providing assistance with use of LS Assist precedent documents.

LS Assist Wheel

A key feature of the service is that whether we discuss your query with you over the phone or email you our answer, we will capture the advice in your LS Assist Portal to ensure you can revisit the advice in the future. We will also periodically review how you are using the Helpdesk to establish trends, common queries, and training needs.

How does LS Assist Projects work?

Where you have a large volume of contracts to analyse, LS Assist Projects offers a bespoke, cost effective contracts review service. The exact scope and cost will be agreed with you up front, but the service may be used, for example, for:

  • Reviewing amendments made by third parties to your standard terms.
  • Checking suppliers' standard contracts against an agreed list of ‘red-flag’ issues.
  • Checking your commercial team’s amendments to your precedent agreements.
  • Confirming template documents are being completed correctly.
  • Red-flag reviews of the other party's amendments to your standard terms.
  • Health check reviews of your precedent agreements.

For the review of contracts of this type at scale, we can use a number of tech solutions to aid the speed and efficiency of delivery, and will always ensure we use the appropriate solution for the job at hand.

"As a small business with broad interests, LS Assist provides us with a cost effective solution to access world class legal resource across a wide range of subjects. We can dial additional support up and down as the business requires, allowing us to manage our overheads as efficiently as possible. I highly recommend both LS Assist, and the Lewis Silkin team behind it."

Holly Bishop, UK Country Director, BandLab Technologies

What does LS Assist cost?

LS Assist operates on a low cost, fixed fee basis with no hidden fees:

  • The LS Assist Helpdesk is available for a fixed monthly fee based on anticipated usage. Prices start from £500 + VAT for 3 hours of Helpdesk support a month followed by £160 per hour. Your usage will be reviewed periodically with the number of hours you are allocated going forwards, and the corresponding cost, adjusted up or down (with your agreement) as appropriate. The first review will take place after 3 months and thereafter we’ll review your usage every 6 months.
  • LS Assist Projects are agreed with you, normally on a fixed fee basis, and always based on the low LS Assist rates. Fees will generally be fixed for the length of the project or per contract reviewed, for on-going projects, will be subject to appropriate periodic reviews agreed with you.
  • We won’t tie you into long contracts, so you can use our LS Assist service for as long as you need it. You can terminate on one month’s notice.
  • You’ll have unlimited access to your LS Assist Portal, including access to the LS Assist library, at no extra cost for as long as you remain a LS Assist client.

How do I get in touch?

To find out more or get a quote, please get in touch directly with Liz Kilcoyne or Alex Kelham.

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