Top-tier lawyers. Acting as your Compliance Officer.
An external senior lawyer, curated one by one, who collaborates with your team as an extension of it: close to the business, carrying the context, answering for the outcome the way your best in-house lawyer would. Only, and to the extent, you need it.
Not someone learning on the go. They have done it before.
- The lawyer
- Curated senior niche talent, one by one, for the specific compliance you need.
- The relationship
- The same person, no rotation and no account handovers. A business partner, not a supplier.
- The shape
- External and fractional. The dedication your workload calls for, for as long as the function needs it.
Modern legal teams are layered.
Three layers, each doing what only it can do. Compliance belongs in the middle one, and that is the layer most teams are still missing.
Owns the company. Knows everything, has time for a fraction of it. Compliance sits on Legal’s or Finance’s desk on top of their real work.
Covers what the team doesn’t master and can’t reach, collaborating with them as one of them.
Take the specialist and contentious work. They draft the programme, then hand it back for you to run.
Niche, not generalist
Criminal, AML, sanctions, anti-bribery, whistleblowing, competition, sectoral, ESG. Excellent at one of these is often no use in another, so we curate for the one you need.
Only, and to the extent, you need it
As much or as little as your workload calls for. Ongoing, because exposure never stops, but never more than the business actually generates.
A business partner, not a supplier
Close to the business, carries the context from one quarter to the next and answers for the outcome. Continuity, ownership and judgment.
The team isn’t over-resourced. It’s short-handed.
Nobody in your team is under-qualified. Everybody is short of time, and compliance is the work that slips first, because nobody outside the company is chasing its deadlines until something has already gone wrong.
Then the shape of the team changes, as it does every year, and the little that was being covered stops being covered. The exposure carries on through all of it. The available hands don’t.
Three ways to handle it. Only one takes it on.
Your team
Knows the business better than any outsider will, which is the hard part to buy. What they don’t have is the specialist depth or the hours, and supervision works badly when it reports to the same people whose decisions it has to question.
A law firm
Reaches the expertise and delivers a programme. You still have to run it, keep it current, look into what comes in and evidence all of it. Usually a junior team does the work, the learning curve is billed to you, and they will try to sell you more.
Fractional Compliance Officer
Sits outside the company, which is what makes the independence real, and works as an extension of the team, which is what makes the advice useful. Knows your business from week one, has done it before, and answers for the outcome rather than handing you options.
Not a programme. A function that runs.
A law firm gives you a programme: a risk map, a code of conduct, a set of policies and a manual. Good work, and on the day it is delivered your exposure is exactly what it was the day before.
Someone has to run it. They work to your priorities, not to a scope of work. They take the report that comes through the channel, decide whether it needs looking into and look into it. They tell a commercial director that a distributor has to go.
A business partner, not a supplier. Continuity, ownership and judgment, from someone who works like one of your own.
- Risk mapKept current as the business enters markets and changes how it sells
- ControlsFollowed up, so you know which ones are actually operating
- ChannelThe internal reporting channel run or supervised, with the record that proves it
- Third partiesDue diligence on agents, distributors, intermediaries and suppliers
- TrainingFor the roles that carry the exposure, not for everyone equally
- AdviceOn the possible breach, while it is still a question rather than an incident
- ReportingTo the administrative body, on a fixed cadence, in the language they need
- EvidenceGathered as you go, so an audit is a week and not a quarter
Four situations. One shape of answer.
Pick yours and we’ll show you the lawyer it calls for and the shape the engagement usually takes.
- The situation
- The lawyer
- How it works
Real impact. Not theory.
Free up capacity in your team. Starting with your own.
Tell us which compliance is keeping you up and we will tell you who should be running it, and in what form.
Book a call →This page describes a service. It is not legal advice. Where the engagement touches the supervision body of a criminal compliance model, how much of the function can sit outside the company depends on its structure and on how the model is configured; we will tell you what is available to you before you sign.