Our dedicated and experienced team of lawyers are here to find effective solutions to your problems.
Benefits
We aim to keep you up to date with legal developments, including implications of new and emerging legislation and case law affecting best practice. Training is a cost-effective way of providing legal advice to a wide range of staff. We will discuss likely areas of training as and when legal issues of significance affecting schools arise.
We aim to ensure we align our work with the school working week and term calendar particularly on construction projects in order to minimise disruption to teaching
Key Service Features
Our high standards and the quality of the work undertaken by the Legal Service team are all approved by the Law Society under its accreditation scheme.
Our fee rates are very competitive in relation to the rates charged by private firms for similar work in London.
We have negotiated and agreed fixed fee arrangements with barristers' chambers with a view to maintaining cost effectiveness without sacrificing the quality of the service. Schools are able to take advantage of our accredited senior legal advisers on advantageous terms.
See our contact details and team strucutre.
Service details
We provide legal advice, prepare legal documents, undertake legal transactions and arrange legal representation in Courts and Tribunals on matters relating to the Client School's business, including:
- Duties and powers of LEA;
- Duties and powers of Governing Body;
- School Admission and Exclusions including co-ordinating arrangements for appeals and clerking Appeal Panels;
- Educational Welfare Issues including Non-School Attendance matters;
- School Transport
- Disclosure of School Records;
- Special Educational Needs and Disability Discrimination;
- Safeguarding Children issues;
- Employment Disputes and resolution;
- Partnership with other Schools and Bodies
- Procurement issues and Commercial/Contractual Disputes
- Debt Collection Recovery support; and
- Property and Land Transactions.
As is common practice in the legal profession, we charge real-time attendance at competitive hourly rates, depending on the category of Lawyer undertaking the work. See full details of hourly charge rates.
Service Standards
- We will normally acknowledge all instructions in writing within five working days of receipt of full instructions and this will include Confirmation of your oral instructions or reference to your written instructions.
Overall priority will be given to litigation, having regard to court and tribunal timescales. We will generally deal with other work in the order it arises unless you request that it be given higher or lesser priority.
- If appropriate, we will discuss with you whether the proposed course of action will justify the expense or risk involved including, if relevant, the risk of having to bear an opponent's costs. We will inform you in writing of any circumstances of which we become aware which will or may affect the degree of risk involved or cost benefit to you of continuing with the matter.
- We are Lexcel accredited. Lexcel is the Law Society's Practice Management Standard.
- We undertake regular satisfaction surveys on each case matter and an annual survey of all our customers as a matter of professional standards review. We will discuss our performance with you on a regular basis.
Click here to see our detailed Service Level Agreement.
Statutory Services
None apply
Our role is to support schools with matters affecting statutory and commercial performance.
Standard terms and conditions apply. Please see the shopping basket for more details
