The Context
For a number of years, I’m often at the end of a phone call, Whatsapp message or email where a client asks a question which I can answer in a short space of time, without much effort. These questions include:
- What does a clause mean?
- The other side have changed a clause and is it important?
- Can you take a quick look at this NDA?
- Somebody hasn’t paid, what do I do?
- Can you recommend a specialist lawyer?
- Can I terminate this contract?
- Can you help in some AI prompts for research?
The vast majority of requests, I never charged mainly because it rarely took more than 15-30 mins to answer the question. Whilst clients were very grateful, I’ve always had the impression that many of them would have preferred to actually pay.
Why didn’t I charge? Invoicing is classed as a “non-fun” task and is such a faff taking longer to raise, send and mark as paid any invoice than the actual time it took to help the client.
Recently somebody confirmed that they would prefer to pay if only then they can use me again. Without payment, they feel as if they couldn’t ask.
The Solution - Sam Retainer
I’ve now added the “Sam Retainer”: it is similar to the main In-house Retainer except instead of purchasing multiples of days, it possible to purchase as little as an hour or two a month. You can find out a little more here.
Who is it suitable for?
In my mind, it is meant for micro-enterprises, one-man bands, freelancers, all those whose need for legal advice is often limited to more clarifications and nudges rather than anything else. Of course, it can be used by bigger businesses if their regular legal needs are very low and irregular.
Name and object
It is called “Sam” because it is short for Samaritan as in the Good one and inspired by what I used to do, ie help because I was able to.
As part of the redesign, I’ve tried to give each of the services an icon: this is a telephone to symbolise availability. I can offer help a communication device away.
So if you are interested, then book a call and I can help you work out if you this is a good option for you or not.
