Fixed-fee legal work for business owners
You are hiring, changing someone's terms, or having the conversation nobody wants to have — and the honest question is what it costs before you pick up the phone. Every employment job on this page has a published figure, agreed in writing before anything starts.
Employment is the area small employers most often get caught by, and almost never because of anything exotic. It is a member of staff who has never had anything in writing, a handbook copied from a business that works nothing like yours, or a contractor who has been treated like an employee for three years. None of that is complicated to fix in advance. All of it is expensive to argue about afterwards.
A commercial solicitor is commonly £200 to £350 +VAT an hour for this work, which means the first invoice arrives before you know what the job costs. The prices below are the whole job.
Each figure is what that job costs at ordinary size and complexity: a first employment contract, one set of policies for a business with a single way of working. It is written as a starting price rather than a flat one because a five-person office and a forty-person operation across three sites are both “a staff handbook”, and charging the same for both would mean overcharging one of you.
What makes an employment job non-standard: several sets of terms for different groups of staff; shift patterns, night work or sector-specific rules; TUPE; anything involving a settlement agreement; and anything already in dispute, which is not fixed-fee work at all. If yours is one of those we say so and give you a figure before starting, not afterwards.
Employment documents, policies, handbooks and contract reviews are not reserved legal activities, which is precisely why we can do them at these prices. 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. Where a matter needs an authorised firm — and a live tribunal claim usually does — it goes to RHF Solicitors, SRA no. 324115, and you are told that at the scoping stage rather than after the invoice.
If a claim has already landed, start at employment tribunal defence instead. If you are not sure whether your paperwork is complete, the employment documents checker takes nine questions and tells you what the law says you must hold.
Two questions settle it. Does this happen to you regularly, or is it one job? And do you want somewhere to ask before you act, or a document produced? One hire a year is a fixed fee. A business where somebody asks you an employment question most months is cheaper on a plan from £49 +VAT a month, and we will tell you which one you are, including when the honest answer is the cheaper one.
The free legal healthcheck scores employment alongside seven other areas in about five minutes and hands you a written list of what to fix first. Employment is the area it most often comes back red on, usually for something that takes an afternoon to put right.
The employment work a small employer actually needs is published above: a starter pack from £895 +VAT, HR policies with a handbook from £1,495 +VAT, and a single contract read and marked up for £249 +VAT. Commercial solicitors are commonly £200 to £350 +VAT an hour for this kind of work, so £249 buys roughly an hour of somebody's time — long enough to read your contract, not to tell you what to do about it. Here the same £249 buys the finished job. The figure is agreed in writing before anything starts and does not move unless the scope does.
Yes, against a scope you have agreed. The prices are what each job costs at ordinary size and complexity, which is why they are written as “from”. If what you have is bigger — twenty staff on four sets of terms, a handbook covering shift patterns and sector rules, or anything already in dispute — we stop and re-quote rather than adding it to the invoice. Nothing begins until you have approved the scope and the figure, and there is no clock running while you think about it.
You must give every employee and worker a written statement of the main terms of their employment, on or before their first day. It is not the same as a full contract and it is not optional. This is one of the more common findings against small employers, because it is straightforward to get right in advance and impossible to fix once someone has already started and things have gone wrong. The employment starter pack covers the statement and the contract around it, so you are not choosing between them.
No, and it is worth being precise about that. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not SRA regulated, so our own work does not carry the SRA compensation fund or the Legal Ombudsman. What we do here — employment documents, policies, handbooks, contract reviews — is not reserved by law to authorised firms, which is why it can be priced like ordinary work. Reserved and contentious matters go to RHF Solicitors, regulated by the SRA under number 324115, at rates confirmed before that work starts.
If employment questions come up regularly rather than once, a subscription is usually cheaper than paying per job. Plans start at £49 +VAT a month, and Virtual HR Manager at £499 +VAT a month includes the contracts, handbook and core policies built for you — which is why that one runs on a twelve-month agreement, since the setup is included rather than charged separately. Ask and we will work out which is cheaper for your situation.
Partly, and the line matters. Preparing the file, building the chronology and working out what the evidence actually supports is work we can do, and doing it properly early is what makes everything afterwards cheaper. Representation in a live tribunal claim is not something to hand to an unregulated provider, so that goes to RHF Solicitors with the groundwork already done rather than being paid for twice. Employment tribunal defence sets out how that works.
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 is enough — a first hire, a handbook that is out of date, a contractor you think may not be one. You get back which package it falls under and one fixed price, or an honest answer that it is not one of these and what it would cost instead. See the privacy policy for how we use your details.
Employment is one of the eight areas it scores. Five minutes, no card.