Two models
In the first, the lawyer is called after the problem: a notice has arrived, a claim has been filed, a contract was signed and its defect has surfaced. The role is remedial, and the room to manoeuvre is limited to what has already happened.
In the second, counsel enters before the decision: before signing, before dismissing, before partnering, before launching. The cost is fixed and known, and risks are addressed while they are still amendable.
Sign one: a repeating contract type
If your company signs the same contract type dozens of times a year — supply, services, employment, lease — you are paying twice: once for repeated review, and once for the risks that pass because nobody reviewed.
The fix is a template built once, with a usage guide marking which clauses are negotiable and which are not.
Sign two: decisions exceed one person
Once more than one person decides, you need to define who decides and within what limit. The absence of an authority matrix does not show on an ordinary day — it shows at the first challenge from a partner, an heir or an investor to a decision taken outside authority.
Sign three: a regulated activity
Regulated activities carry periodic obligations with fixed deadlines. When those obligations live in an employee's memory rather than in a written register, breaches surface at inspection rather than before it.
A compliance programme is, at heart, a register: the obligation, its statutory source, its owner, its deadline, and evidence of performance.
Sign four: preparing to raise or exit
Investor due diligence reveals everything unaddressed: incomplete minutes, unsigned contracts, expired licences, undisclosed disputes. Each finding becomes either a valuation discount or a condition precedent.
Closing those findings before the transaction begins is far cheaper than negotiating them during it.
Sign five: recurring small disputes
Repeated disputes with suppliers, customers or employees are rarely bad luck. They are usually the direct effect of an ambiguous clause in a template in use, or an internal process that fails to document what must be documented.
A practical indicator: if the same dispute recurs three times, the problem is in the document, not in the counterparty.
