FAQs

We are not a law firm. We are team of legal, procurement and business professionals. Law firms are authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).The services we provide are not regulated by the SRA. This allows us to maintain lean overheads and to focus on flexibility, efficiency and quality of legal support. Our aim is to operate like your own in-house legal consultant or procurement expert. In the UK, there are certain activities which are “reserved” to solicitors (and in some cases other authorised, regulated persons like barristers or licensed conveyancers). These are:

• the exercise of a right of audience (i.e. the right to act as an advocate in court);
• the conduct of litigation;
• conveyancing;
• probate activities;
• notarising; and
• the administration of oaths.

Kennedy Cater does not conduct any of these reserved activities. We do however connect our clients to the best lawyers for services in these areas. We provide legal support in non-contentious commercial contracts, intellectual property, IT matters. employment, privacy, company secretarial, which are not activities reserved to solicitors.

Kennedy Cater maintains professional indemnity cover of £2,000,000 per claim. In addition, Kennedy Cater Legal limits and excludes its liability under its standard terms within conventional commercial parameters.

We are a one-stop-shop for all your legal needs. We provide an array of different packages or modules to match your business requirements. We are experienced at supporting our clients’ entire life cycle of legal services – from procurement (legal panels, spend reviews, cost management and more) to sourcing your legal needs, whether directly or indirectly.

We can mix and match a variety of legal modules to tailor our support. For example, we can provide commercial contracts support aligned with access to employment and privacy legal support.

We have close connections with tried and tested law firms and barristers’ chambers and as such we can also source third party counsel advice at the Kennedy Cater discounted rates as and when required.

We can provide one-off support charged by the hour (at a reduced rate), agree a fixed fee or we can set up a retainer whereby you can spread your costs across the year, safe in the knowledge that we are at the end of an email or phone call to help you.

It is important to stress that Kennedy Cater is an independent consultant and in recommending certain law firms, our only focus is what’s best for the client. Law firms do not pay Kennedy Cater a fee for recommending them.

Yes, of course. We provide tailored support so we can either work very closely with team members who require legal guidance, or we can stand back and provide support which can be utlised as you require in the business. We can act as your own in-house counsel, available via Zoom, Teams, face to face and at the end of an email which can be customised to your business email address.

Not at all. We provide highly skilled legal support which entails experienced legal professionals who are commercial in their approach and in their application of the law. Our staff members have lots of experience working in law firms and companies.

Absolutely. We have an international panel of law firms who can provide our clients with the required services at the Kennedy Cater negotiated discounts. Many of our own staff members are experienced working in other jurisdictions and will always be happy to discuss your needs.

Kennedy Cater manages the Housing Associations’ Legal Alliance (HALA) which provides Housing Associations savings on a huge range of legal fees and social value benefits. We also established and are managing the CHIC (Communities and Housing Investment Consortium) legal services framework which offers significant savings and discounts for its members. Furthermore, we manage the London Boroughs' Legal Alliance (LBLA) which was established in 2009 as a successful collaborative partnership of local authority legal teams in the UK, at the forefront of innovative procurement practice and efficiency strategy, delivering a demonstrable best value service to clients and local residents.

Legal procurement is the purchasing of legal services and part of our proposition is to ensure you receive quality services at a fair price. Whether it is through external legal suppliers not offering competitive rates, a lack of internal contract management of external suppliers or inefficient internal working practices, it is very simple for the overall legal services bill to grow and not deliver value for money. Here at Kennedy Cater we have developed a simple yet robust approach to identifying the potential for delivering savings and supporting the Client in realising those benefits, building on our experience and expertise of the legal market, best practice procurement and organisational change management.