FAQs

Got more questions? Send us an email at [email protected].

How do I get started and what's your process?

Just click the ‘Get Started’ button on our website and submit an enquiry. After you’ve submitted an enquiry, one of our legal project managers will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal project manager will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed-fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you’re happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online – easy!

Once you’ve formally accepted, we’ll connect you with one of our lawyers and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

What areas do you specialise in?

Sprintlaw is a full-service commercial legal provider for SMEs and startups. We have lawyers with expertise in pretty much every area of business law, including corporate law, technology law, data & privacy, commercial contracts, employment law, leases, financing and capital raising and more.

There are a few limited areas we do not advise on including contentious or litigious matters, conveyancing, debt collection, taxation, or personal legal matters (such as wills, estates or personal injury).  We have partners we can refer you to if you require assistance with these kinds of matters.

If you’re not sure whether we can help with your legal task or question, feel free to get in touch and our team can assess it and let you know.

What is a legal consultancy? Are you a regulated law firm?

Sprintlaw operates in Australia and the UK. In Australia, Sprintlaw is a regulated law firm and is an incorporated legal practice with number 32845 regulated by the Law Society of New South Wales. In England and Wales, Sprintlaw instead operates as a legal consultancy and is not a traditionally regulated law firm under the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

So what is a legal consultancy? A ‘legal consultancy’ is a new, innovative model of legal practice which has been available in the UK since 25 November 2019 stemming from changes introduced under the SRA Standards and Regulations 2019. The SRA’s stated intention in introducing this model was to “expand the ways in which solicitors can work in unregulated entities to promote increased opportunities for innovation, greater competition and a raising of standards and protections in the unregulated sector“.

As part of our legal consultancy model, Sprintlaw UK employs a mix of UK-qualified solicitors and Australian lawyers who provide legal services to our SME clients in the UK.

Because we’re not SRA-regulated, it means we have a lower compliance burden and we’re able to significantly reduce our overhead costs when performing legal work. We are then able to pass on these cost savings to our clients, allowing us to provide high quality legal services to clients at a fraction of the cost of traditional firms.

It is important to note that there are a few limitations of the legal consultancy model. We’ve set out the key differences below. In our view, the benefits of engaging a legal consultancy outweigh these limitations for smaller growth companies which is why we’ve elected to operate this way in the UK. If you have any questions about any of these our team would be more than happy to discuss.

Key Differences

Reserved Services: Firstly, as a legal consultancy Sprintlaw is not allowed to offer legal services in certain ‘reserved areas‘, which would require us to be an SRA-regulated firm. These reserved areas include appearing in court, conducting litigation, lodging certain property documents, conducting probate, administering oaths and notarial activities. As such, Sprintlaw does not operate in these areas. We find these areas are rarely applicable to our business clients seeking commercial advisory services.

Privilege: Secondly, when working with traditional law firms, advice provided is considered “privileged”. This means that correspondence between a client and solicitor can, if made confidentially and for the purposes of legal advice, be withheld from a court or third party in connection with litigation proceedings. As Sprintlaw operates as a legal consultancy, it means that certain advice we provide may not be “privileged” but rather will be treated in the same manner as advice from your accountants or anyone else who is not a regulated advisor such as a solicitor or barrister. This does not affect our confidentiality obligations to you, and our engagement letter confirms that any advice or discussions we have will be kept confidential. Given that Sprintlaw do not operate in court-related or litigious matters, we find that privilege is rarely an issue relevant to our kind of legal work.

Insurance: Thirdly, Sprintlaw is not required to have professional indemnity insurance that meets the SRA’s minimum terms and conditions (MTCs) set out here. Regardless, Sprintlaw has chosen to maintain professional indemnity cover of £2,000,000 per claim so our clients still benefit from insurance protection.

SRA CF: Fourthly, Sprintlaw clients will not be eligible to make a claim under the SRA Compensation Fund, which is available to clients of regulated firms where their money has been stolen, misappropriated, or otherwise not properly accounted for; or in certain other limited circumstances. Considering we do not hold funds in escrow for clients in any transactional matters, this is not a pertinent risk to our clients. You can read more about the Fund here.

Who are your lawyers?

Our team is made up of experienced solicitors and lawyers from the UK and Australia, who are specialists in various areas of law. Many of our lawyers were trained at leading firms and left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. If you’d like more detail about our lawyers and their expertise, check out our ‘Meet the Team page here.

Do you have an office?

Sprintlaw is a fully online law firm, which means our team members to work remotely from their home offices or co-working spaces that we sponsor. We have a head office in Sydney, Australia and our UK team works from co-working spaces in central London.

How does payment work?

Unlike traditional law firms, everything we do is on a fixed-fee basis. This means you will always know the total cost of your legal bill from the start.

Once you’ve accepted and signed our engagement letter, we will send through the payment details. Please note that we take full payment upfront.

How do I contact my lawyer once I've paid?

Once you’ve accepted our engagement and paid the fees, we will allocate you a lawyer who will take care of your project. Your allocated specialist will contact you via email and let you know if there’s anything they need.

Once your lawyer gets started with your project, they will keep you updated as to the estimated delivery time and will let you know if they require any information from you.

Please also note that our lawyers generally don’t take unscheduled calls as it helps keep things running efficiently. If a call is necessary to complete your job, your lawyer will provide you with an link to our call booking system. Please book in a time using this link whenever you need to chat to your lawyer.

If you have urgent queries or would like to follow up with your lawyer, you can email us at [email protected] and we’ll provide an update as soon as we can.

How long does it take?

Generally, it takes us 1 – 2 weeks to complete a legal project. However this can vary depending on how busy we are, unforeseen complexities with your project and your availability for calls or your response to provide us with the information we require.

We will provide you with an estimated delivery time for your project once we get started, and we’ll keep you updated during your project if there is likely to be any change to this delivery time

Do you have professional indemnity insurance?

Yes, Sprintlaw has professional indemnity cover of £2,000,000 per claim.