Fixed-fee legal work for business owners
You can sign it and hope, or pay an hourly firm to read it and find out the cost afterwards. A contract review here is a fixed £249 +VAT, agreed in writing before anybody opens the document.
Almost nobody reads a commercial contract properly before signing it, and the reason is not laziness. It is that the cost of finding out is unknown. At £200 to £350 +VAT an hour — what a commercial solicitor commonly charges for this work — asking somebody to read twelve pages is an open cheque, and the document usually needs signing this week.
So the contract gets signed. The liability clause nobody read becomes a problem two years later, when the thing it covers actually happens.
A fixed fee removes the reason not to look. You know the number before we start, and the number is the whole job rather than an hour of somebody's time.
Four clauses decide most of what a contract will cost you, and they are rarely the ones that look frightening.
Liability. Whether your exposure is capped, at what, and whether the cap has been quietly carved out for the things most likely to go wrong. An uncapped indemnity in a £20,000 contract is a £20,000 contract with unlimited downside.
Termination. Who can walk away, on what notice, and what happens to work already done and money already spent. A contract you cannot get out of is a different product from the one you thought you were buying.
Payment. When you actually get paid rather than when you invoice, what triggers the obligation, and whether late payment carries any consequence at all. This is the clause that turns into a debt problem eighteen months later.
What happens when it goes wrong. Which law applies, where a dispute is heard, whether you have to mediate first, and what the other side has to prove. Nobody reads this and everybody relies on it.
The £249 is a contract of ordinary length and complexity — a normal commercial agreement between two businesses. It is written as a starting price rather than a flat one because a ten-page supplier agreement and a sixty-page framework contract are both “a contract review”, and charging the same for both would mean overcharging one of you.
What makes a review non-standard: the length and complexity of the document; the number of parties; selling to consumers rather than businesses, which brings statutory cancellation rights and the unfair terms rules into play; a schedule of related documents rather than a single agreement; and anything already in dispute, which is not fixed-fee work at all. If yours is one of those, you get a figure before we start rather than after.
A marked-up copy of your own document, so you can see exactly where each comment attaches. A written summary that separates the terms that are standard and fine from the ones worth pushing back on, ranked by what they would actually cost you. And suggested wording for the clauses worth changing, so the reply to the other side writes itself.
What you will not get is a redrafted contract presented as legally approved. We explain what a clause does and why it matters; we do not supply operative drafting you rely on without advice on your circumstances.
If you want a sense of where a contract stands before spending anything, the contract risk checker asks eleven questions and shows where a document leaves you exposed on liability, payment, intellectual property and termination. It is free and takes a few minutes. The guide to business contracts covers the same ground in longer form.
One contract a year is a fixed fee. A business signing somebody else's paperwork most months is cheaper on a plan from £49 +VAT a month — the £249 plan is the first one where a person reads your contracts and marks them up rather than you drafting from templates. We will tell you which you are, including when the answer is the cheaper one.
Reviewing and explaining a contract is not a reserved legal activity, which is why it can be priced like ordinary work. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the SRA, so our own work does not carry the SRA compensation fund or the Legal Ombudsman. If your contract is already in dispute, or the review turns up something that needs an authorised firm, it goes to RHF Solicitors (SRA no. 324115) and you are told that at the scoping stage, before you have spent anything. See preparing for a dispute if you are already past that point.
A fixed £249 +VAT for a commercial contract of ordinary length and complexity, agreed in writing before anything starts. That is the whole job rather than an hourly rate: at the £200 to £350 +VAT an hour commonly quoted for this kind of work, £249 buys roughly an hour of a solicitor's time, which is long enough to read your contract but not to tell you what to do about it. If your document is materially bigger than ordinary — a long framework agreement, several linked documents, or consumer-facing terms — we say so and re-quote before starting rather than adding it to the invoice.
Somebody reads the contract you have been asked to sign, in full, and tells you what it means for you rather than what it says. You get a marked-up copy of your own document, a written summary separating the standard terms from the ones worth arguing about, and suggested wording for the clauses to push back on. The point is not to find every imperfection — every contract has those — but to identify the small number of clauses that would actually cost you money if the relationship goes wrong, and to tell you which of them the other side is likely to move on.
Yes, and it is worth doing when something has started to go wrong or when the same agreement is about to renew. What changes is the purpose: instead of telling you what to negotiate, the review tells you where you already stand — what you are committed to, what your options are, and whether there is a way out. Be aware that if the matter has already become a dispute it stops being fixed-fee work and needs a different conversation, and possibly a regulated firm. Say so when you send it and we will tell you which it is.
The service is built for business-to-business commercial agreements — client, supplier, reseller and partnership contracts. Selling to consumers brings a different set of rules into play, including statutory cancellation rights and the unfair terms regime, so consumer-facing terms are priced separately as part of a terms and conditions package rather than as a single review. If you are not sure which side of that line your document falls on, send it and we will tell you before quoting.
We will suggest wording for the clauses worth changing, so your reply to the other side is straightforward to send. What we will not do is hand over redrafted operative wording presented as legally approved and safe to rely on without advice on your particular circumstances — that is a line we hold deliberately, and it is part of what makes the fixed fee honest. If your matter genuinely needs a solicitor to draft and stand behind the wording, that goes to RHF Solicitors and you are told before any money is spent.
Then paying per document is usually the wrong shape. A business that signs somebody else's paperwork most months is normally cheaper on a monthly plan, and the £249 +VAT a month plan is the first one where a person reads your contracts and marks them up rather than you working from templates. A single job stays a fixed fee. We will work out which is cheaper for the volume you actually have, and say so plainly even when the answer costs us the larger sale.
Buzz Legal handles contracts, terms of trade, employment paperwork and dispute preparation. Court work, and the other activities reserved by law, are carried out by RHF Solicitors, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (no. 324115) — and you are told which yours is before you spend anything. How this works, in full. This site is information rather than advice on your situation.
One line on what it is and who sent it. You get back a fixed price against a defined scope, or an honest answer that it is bigger than ordinary and what that would cost instead. See the privacy policy for how we use your details.
Fixed £249 +VAT for an ordinary commercial contract.