Non-reserved business legal services
Three plans, at £49, £249 and £499 +VAT a month. The £49 plan gives you documents to work from and somewhere to ask a question before you sign; the £249 plan is the first one where a person reads your contracts; the £499 plan adds your whole employment framework. Which one is yours comes down to whether you sign contracts you did not write, and whether you employ anyone.
A contract arrives. You read the indemnity clause twice and still cannot tell whether it is ordinary or the reason you lose the business in two years. On an hourly retainer that question costs money, so most owners never ask it and sign anyway. On a monthly plan you send the document and the question, and you get back, in plain English, whether it is standard, which clause would actually cost you and what to ask for instead — before you sign rather than after. Because the fee is fixed, asking never changes the bill.
Two honest limits, up front. It is a monthly allowance rather than an unlimited hotline: each plan buys a stated amount of work, and if a job is too big for it you are told and quoted rather than quietly rationed. And a plan is prevention, not rescue — it does not retrospectively cover an argument you were already having on the day you joined.
£49, £249 or £499 +VAT, whichever plan you are on. Asking a question does not change the bill, which is the entire point: the hourly model prices you out of the cheap conversation and into the expensive one.
Your contracts are read by someone who knows how you trade. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the SRA — where a matter is reserved or contentious, a solicitor at RHF Solicitors takes it.
Legal Foundations and Business Legal are rolling monthly: 30 days' notice by email, no exit fee, no reason required. Virtual HR Manager runs on a 12-month agreement, because your employment framework is built into the fee rather than billed separately.
Two questions decide it. Do you regularly sign commercial contracts you did not write, and do you employ anybody? No to both, and Legal Foundations does the job. Yes to the first, Business Legal. Yes to the second, Virtual HR Manager. All fees are per month and exclude VAT, and on every plan reserved work sits with RHF Solicitors rather than with us.
Pay for ten months and get twelve on any plan. Legal Foundations and Business Legal stay rolling monthly either way, with 30 days' notice to cancel; Virtual HR Manager is a 12-month agreement because the employment setup is inside the fee rather than billed separately.
Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the SRA. Reserved and contentious matters — litigation, court work, anything the law says an authorised firm must do — are carried out by RHF Solicitors, regulated by the SRA (no. 324115), at rates agreed in writing before that work starts and charged on top of your monthly fee. Your plan buys the front door and the preparation, so the solicitor is not starting from a blank page.
A short call about how you trade, who you employ and what you sign. You come out of it with a plan recommendation — including “you do not need one yet, buy the fixed fee instead” where that is the honest answer.
Your current documents and the details of how the business really runs. The legal health check comes back with what is missing, what is out of date, and what to fix first rather than a list of everything at once.
Send the contract and the question. It comes back marked up: what is standard, what would cost you, what to ask for instead. If a matter is reserved or contentious, it moves to RHF Solicitors and you are told before anything is spent.
A monthly plan is for the day-to-day legal work of running a business: the questions, documents and contracts that come up as you trade. Some things sit outside it, and it is better to know that now than on the day you need them.
None of that is a dead end. Anything on the second list can be quoted as fixed-fee work, or handed to a regulated firm where the law requires one.
The library holds starting-point documents for the paperwork small businesses generate most often, written in plain English with notes explaining what each clause is doing and why it is there. Be clear about the limit. They are not drafted for your business, nobody has read your situation, and a document you complete yourself has not been approved by anyone. For low-stakes internal paperwork that is usually fine. For anything you are about to sign, anything with real money attached, or anything a customer has sent you, have it read before it binds you — which is what the contract reviews on Business Legal are for, and what a £249 +VAT review buys on any plan.
A fixed fee buys one defined job and then ends: one contract reviewed at £249 +VAT, one set of terms at £695 +VAT, one handbook at £1,495 +VAT. A monthly plan buys a standing allowance of attention, plus the documents, the library and the reminders — and it is what makes the small question free to ask. The test is frequency. One contract this year and nothing after it, pay the fixed fee. Legal questions landing most months, and the plan usually costs less than the same work bought one job at a time. You can also do both: fixed-fee work is 10% cheaper on any plan.
No, and it is worth being precise about that. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not SRA-regulated. Your subscription buys non-reserved legal support — contract reviews, drafting, employment documents, policies and day-to-day questions — from the Buzz Legal team. Reserved work, meaning litigation, court advocacy, conveyancing, probate, notarial work and administering oaths, can only be done by an authorised firm, and for Buzz Legal clients that is RHF Solicitors, regulated by the SRA (no. 324115), at agreed rates on top of your subscription. So the everyday support is fast and predictable, and a qualified solicitor is already behind it for the narrow set of things that legally require one.
Two questions settle it. Do you regularly sign commercial contracts somebody else wrote? If not, Legal Foundations at £49 +VAT a month is enough: the health check, the template library, document storage with reminders, questions on a fair-use basis and 10% off fixed-fee work. If you do, you want Business Legal at £249 +VAT, because that is the first plan where a person reads your contracts and marks them up. Do you employ anyone? Then Virtual HR Manager at £499 +VAT, which adds the employment framework and the day-to-day staff questions. Paid annually, any plan is ten months' fee for twelve — £490, £2,490 or £4,990 +VAT a year. If Foundations is enough for you, we will say so rather than sell you the middle one.
On Business Legal, typically four to six matters a month plus up to three contract reviews of around 20 pages each, with negotiation guidance. Legal Foundations does not include human contract review at all — it is the template library plus questions on a fair-use basis. Virtual HR Manager adds ongoing HR documentation and day-to-day staff issues on top of everything in Business Legal. These are guides rather than hard cut-offs, and we will not stop the clock on you in a busy month. But where usage consistently runs past the plan, we will tell you and recommend moving up rather than quietly rationing the service or letting response times drift.
Legal Foundations and Business Legal are rolling monthly. Email hello@buzzaccounting.co.uk giving 30 days' notice and the most you will pay after that is one further month. There is no exit fee, no minimum term and no requirement to give a reason. Virtual HR Manager is different: it runs on a 12-month agreement, because the Employer Essentials setup — contracts, handbook and core policies — is included in the monthly fee rather than charged separately, and that setup starts at £1,495 +VAT as a standalone fixed-fee job. Treat it as a full-year commitment, and if you are not sure, start on Business Legal and move up later.
Disputes and litigation, including anything already in dispute on the day you join. Court work, advocacy and the other reserved activities. Property transactions and conveyancing. One-off projects such as funding rounds, acquisitions and restructures. Immigration, criminal and personal, non-business matters. Payroll, pensions auto-enrolment and PAYE, which Buzz Accounting handles, and tax advice generally. Formal valuations. None of it is a dead end: anything on that list can be quoted as fixed-fee work, or referred to RHF Solicitors at agreed rates confirmed before the work starts. The one to watch is the first — a subscription is prevention, and it does not retrospectively cover an argument you were already having.
Because the setup is included inside the monthly fee rather than billed separately. Virtual HR Manager includes Employer Essentials — employment contracts, a staff handbook and the core policies — built for your business at the start. Bought as a fixed-fee project, the handbook and policy set alone starts at £1,495 +VAT. At £499 +VAT a month that setup is not paid for until several months in, so the twelve-month term is what makes the pricing work rather than a retention tactic. If you would rather not commit for a year, the alternative is straightforward: take Business Legal on a rolling monthly basis and buy the employment documents as fixed-fee work.
The documents themselves are yours and stay yours. A set of terms and conditions, an employment contract or a shareholder agreement drafted for you does not stop working because you stopped paying — they are your business's documents, not licensed access to ours. What you lose on cancellation is the service around them: the template library, the questions, the contract reviews and the renewal reminders on your stored documents. So before your notice period ends, take copies of anything held in your Buzz Legal document storage. Client files are kept for typically six years after the relationship ends, as our privacy policy sets out, and you can ask for a copy of your personal data at any point.
It leaves the subscription. Contentious matters are not covered by the monthly fee, and the trigger is the other side instructing solicitors, threatening a claim or issuing proceedings — not how annoyed you are. What the subscription does buy is the stage before that, which is where most disputes are actually resolved: working out what you can prove, building the chronology and drafting the letter before action. Where it has to escalate, it goes to RHF Solicitors at agreed rates quoted before the work starts, with the preparation already done, so you are not paying a regulated firm to read in from the beginning.
It starts with a free legal review — a short call to work out where the gaps are and which plan fits, or whether you need one at all. From there you share your business details and the documents you currently use, and we run the legal health check, which comes back with what is missing, what is out of date and what to fix first. We do not promise a turnaround time, because it depends on how much you already have and how complicated it is. The thing that most determines the pace is you: send the actual documents rather than descriptions of them, answer the questions about how the business really operates in one go, and the first month moves considerably faster.
Clear scope · fixed fees available. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the SRA.