Contracts, terms of trade, employment paperwork and unpaid invoices — for the people who own and run the business. A contract review is £249 +VAT.
Buzz Legal works with the people who own and run businesses — founders, directors and employers. We do the legal jobs that come up while you are trying to trade: the contract somebody wants signed this week, the terms you have never had written properly, the paperwork behind a first hire, the invoice that has gone quiet. You are told the price in writing before anything starts.
A customer has sent over their own contract and wants it back signed. We read it and mark up the clauses that actually bite.
You are still trading on terms copied off a website years ago, or on nothing written down at all. Your terms decide who carries the loss.
You are hiring, changing someone's terms, or having the conversation nobody wants to have. Paperwork that stands up if it is challenged.
Sixty days late and they have stopped answering the phone. What you can actually prove, and the letter the courts expect you to send first.
Two owners, a handshake, and nothing written down about what happens if one of you stops turning up. Cheap now, expensive later.
Something has gone wrong and you do not know whether you have a case. We build the chronology and say honestly how strong it looks.
Our debt recovery service, and a trading style of Buzz Legal — so the same people and the same position on who does what. It costs your debt live as you type, tells you which pre-action rules apply to your debtor, and prices every stage from the letter before action through to enforcement.
See how recovery works →Badger is our credit control software. It chases your overdue invoices for you, costs each one properly — statutory interest fixed at the right reference date, plus the compensation you are entitled to per invoice — and hands a file straight into formal recovery at published fixed fees if chasing does not work.
Robert has run his own firm, RHF Solicitors, since 2001. He practises in commercial litigation and insolvency, and since 2006 has held Higher Rights of Audience in civil proceedings, which means he can argue a case in the High Court himself rather than briefing a barrister to do it.
Most of what a business owner needs never goes near a courtroom, and that is the work we do at a fixed price. When a matter does need a court, or anything else only an authorised firm may carry out, Robert takes it through RHF Solicitors. You are told which yours is at the scoping stage, before you have spent anything.
Buzz Legal is a legal services firm for business owners, and RHF Solicitors is the authorised firm alongside it. The division between them follows the Legal Services Act 2007. Non-reserved work is ours, and it is the large majority of what a business needs: contracts, terms and conditions, employment documents, staff handbooks, privacy notices, shareholder agreements, debt recovery and dispute preparation. Six activities are reserved to authorised firms — conducting litigation, rights of audience, reserved instrument activities covering most conveyancing, probate, notarial activities and administering oaths — and those are carried out by RHF Solicitors, authorised and regulated by the SRA under number 324115. Robert Festenstein is a solicitor and acts on reserved matters through RHF.
Fixed-fee work starts at £249 +VAT for a contract review, £695 +VAT for a set of business terms and conditions, £895 +VAT for an employment starter pack, £1,250 +VAT for a shareholder agreement and £1,495 +VAT for HR policies and a staff handbook. Subscriptions are £49, £249 or £499 +VAT a month. For comparison, at the £200 to £350 +VAT hourly rates commonly quoted for this kind of work, £249 buys between roughly 45 minutes and an hour and a quarter of a solicitor’s time. Whichever route you take, the scope and the price go to you in writing before anything starts, and nothing begins until you have agreed both.
Anything reserved by law to an authorised firm — conducting litigation, court advocacy, conveyancing, probate, notarial work and administering oaths — and anything that is already contentious when it reaches us. If the other side has instructed solicitors or threatened proceedings, that is a dispute rather than a contract review, and it is handled by RHF Solicitors at rates confirmed before that work begins. You are told which side of the line your matter falls on at the scoping stage, before you have committed to anything.
It moves. The moment a matter is contentious — the other side has instructed solicitors, threatened a claim or issued proceedings — it stops being non-reserved work and goes to RHF Solicitors (SRA no. 324115). You hear that as soon as we see it, usually at the scoping stage before you have committed to anything. What we do first is the groundwork: triage, chronology, gathering evidence and drafting the letter before action, which settles a good number of matters without proceedings. Where one does escalate, the prepared file goes with it, so you are not paying twice for the same background.
Two reasons, and both are structural. The first is that the work is scoped and priced as a job rather than metered as time, so the risk of it taking longer than expected sits with us instead of with you. The second is that non-reserved work does not carry the regulatory cost base an SRA-regulated firm funds — compulsory professional indemnity arrangements, compensation fund contributions, a client account and the compliance reporting around all of it. Reserved and contentious matters do carry that cost, which is why they are handled by RHF Solicitors and priced separately.
Anything carried out by RHF Solicitors has the full protection that applies to an SRA-regulated firm, including the compensation fund and the Legal Ombudsman. For work we carry out ourselves, we publish a complaints procedure: acknowledgement within five working days, a substantive response within twenty, and a review by a senior person who was not involved if that response does not settle it. Data complaints can go to the ICO at any time on 0303 123 1113. Those SRA routes attach to RHF’s work rather than ours, so if that distinction matters to your matter, say so at the outset and we will place it with RHF from the start.
Yes, as a matter of contract and of data protection law. Enquiry details, documents and correspondence are held under UK GDPR: general enquiries for up to 12 months, prospective client records for up to 24 months, and client files for typically six years after the relationship ends. Data is shared only where there is a real reason, such as passing a reserved matter to RHF Solicitors. This site uses Google Analytics only if you accept the cookie banner, and we run no advertising cookies at all. One thing worth naming: legal professional privilege is a separate question from confidentiality, and it is not something we can assume applies to advice that does not come from a qualified lawyer, so if privilege matters, say so at the outset.
Yes, and it is usually the point. Buzz Legal sits alongside Buzz Accounting and Buzz Financial Services, and we work with whoever already advises you. It matters because the legal and tax answers rarely separate cleanly: a shareholder agreement has tax consequences in its leaver provisions, an employment contract runs straight into payroll and pension duties, and whether someone is a contractor is a legal question and a tax question at the same time. Tax advice itself is your accountant’s job, and we will tell you when a document you are about to sign needs one of them to look at it first.
Tell us what has happened and what you want to happen about it. We will come back with what the job involves, who carries it out and what it costs, in writing, before you commit to anything.
