Inhouse Legal Services: Why SMEs Should Consider Them

SMEs are currently losing an estimated £13.6 billion a year, by failing to tackle legal issues. The average UK SME is likely to encounter more than eight legal issues a year. Despite this, these types of businesses are often far less likely to protect their business by regularly using a lawyer, than they are to take out insurance policies to protect against other areas of risk. Why? According to YouGov, SMEs are likely to assume that risky outcomes will happen to other businesses, not to them.

That said, they do understand that using lawyers is likely to improve things for their business and reduce the risk of future costs. But, while knowing that legal support is valuable, SMEs are often casual in their approach to seeking it, and will often do so on a purely reactive basis or as a last resort, rather than seeing getting things right legally as fundamental to the business.