Intuitive Legal can conduct a range of risk mitigation and compliance exercises on behalf of your firm.  

We can undertake in depth gap analysis working closely with the firm’s compliance officer, which identifies and clarifies the risk your organisation faces. Intuitive Legal will then aid in designing and implementing measures to ensure the organisation has the correct systems and controls in place to adequately manage the risk that it faces.  

It is a duty of the compliance officer of each organisation to provide compliance services, and to ensure they are complying with the required law and legislation, as well as internal procedures. Intuitive Legal provide assistance and support to the compliance officer to undertake the role effectively. 

When reviewing risk in your organisation, we focus on: 

• The nature and size of the operation 
• The complexity of the business  
• The scale of the business  
• The diversity of your operation 
• The volume of your transactions 
• The size of your transactions  

We can also conduct an in-depth review of your Firm Wide Risk Register, which is a legal requirement and must be monitored on an ongoing basis. It must adequately address all pertinent areas of risk, including regulatory risks, operational risks, and financial risks.  

Is your compliance officer aware of their duties, objectives and responsibilities? Intuitive Legal provide assistance for the COLP and can review all risk policies within the firm, and update where required. Where policies are too long, we can create summaries to assist their digestibility, however this is not a replacement for the policy itself.  

We may also review the firm’s procurement process to ensure that parties you may contract with are not thwarting the firm’s ability to meet its regulatory obligations. This includes reviewing all third-party contracts and assessing the relationships with each. In addition to this, we can review and tailor the firm’s client engagement letters to ensure that they are functional, compliant and of high quality.   

Intuitive Legal can also assist in Trend Analysis and Forward Risk Planning. This is an important aspect of any firm’s risk management strategy as it enables you to plan how to mitigate future risks based on current trends. We can provide a yearly report which analyses trends from a risk and compliance perspective, considering a range of areas such as complaints, claims, queries, training, and regulatory changes. 

We can provide our risk and compliance services as an ongoing supportive function for your business, covering all best practice compliance activities. We recognise that the obligations of your firms COLP and COFA can be onerous especially on top of their usual workload, so we at Intuitive Legal work to alleviate some of this pressure and ensure that everything is done correctly to the highest standard.   

As part of our ongoing support package, we provide regular on-site training for staff relating to AML regulations and other SRA requirements, online general compliance training, price transparency review, an annual business risk assessment, and ongoing gap analysis in relation to the Solicitors Accounts Rules. Further to this, we also ensure that you are kept up to date with all of the changes, updates and guidance from the SRA and Law Society that are relevant to your business and clients.  

Backed by years of experience in SRA Conduct and Accounts Rules, we provide advisory services to law firms on all aspects of SRA Regulation. We strive to ensure our law firms are compliant with all regulatory obligations and are always up to date with all the latest requirements and guidance. We can offer our SRA Compliance Advisory Service in a number of ways: 

• One off support for general SRA queries 
• Support for larger, more complex projects 
• Ongoing monthly support, including access to our SRA advice helpline 

We assist companies to ensure they are fully equipped to deal with any regulatory visits. The regulator will normally undertake onsite supervised investigations at your offices. Is your business ready for such an inspection? We ensure all policies and procedures are fully compliant with all regulations, and are easy to access and present should the need arise.  

Corporate Governance covers a number of aspects about how an organisation is managed, directed and governed. It is often described as a set of relationships between a company, management, board, shareholders and other stakeholders, which provides a structure through which objectives of the company are set. Our Corporate Governance Analysis service provides the means of analysing and monitoring your firm’s performance against these objectives.

We review the framework of policies, processes and procedures used by your firm to ensure that it can fulfil all the tasks required to achieve its objectives. We highlight any weaknesses and develop new systems and strategies to aid with the efficient and effective running of the business.  

 Hundreds of thousands of pounds of criminally derived money is laundered through financial institutions annually. The nature of services offered by the legal sector means that it is vulnerable to abuse by money launderers. Is your practice subject to AML Regulations? Are you and your staff familiar with the latest guidance issued by LSAG? 

We offer independent audits for practices within the scope of AML regulations, and can review the business’s AML systems to ensure adequacy and total compliance. 

We will also produce and present to the board a full report on the operation and effectiveness of the AML systems and controls in place and suggest any necessary changes.

Intuitive Legal can review the firm’s training policies to assess their general effectiveness and highlight any gaps and weaknesses.  We can then develop and enhance your business training programme to ensure it meets the firm’s requirements and industry standards. 

In light of Covid-19, is your business’s continuity plan up to date and fully compliant? We can test your current procedures to ensure your business continuity plan works and is effective in the current climate. We can also assist with succession planning review.  

Intuitive Legal can review your firm’s current equality and diversity policies and systems, and provide comprehensive training to staff and management in these areas. Strong, meaningful equality and diversity policies are becoming increasingly prominent within the legal sector, and having them in place can function as a key part of your firms Corporate Social Responsibility programme. Intuitive Legal can also assist with completing the SRA’s diversity reporting survey. 

We can conduct an in-depth review of your firm’s website, digital badge and letterhead in relation to the publicity and transparency rules. We can assess your website to ensure it is compliant with all regulations, and cannot be construed as misleading. 

Intuitive Legal can offer Finance Management advice to firms for a range of different aspects. We can advise on: 

• Mergers and acquisitions  
• Raising funds 
• Sales  
• Improving profitability  
• Outsourcing 
• Structure and governance  
• Starting new financial funds from scratch  

Financial stability has always been a huge risk area, and there comes a point where you have to involve your regulator – however uncomfortable that may be. We are here to provide support and guidance and can undertake a full review of the COFA’s duties and responsibilities within your firm. We can also undertake a full financial stability review and present our findings, highlighting any cause for concern.  

We can implement rigid financial controls in order to ensure all financial obligations are being met and risks are mitigated. This includes adequate vetting and training of staff, ensuring all staff are aware of their responsibilities to keep consumer money safe, and having good account management systems in place. 

Intuitive Legal can conduct a full review of your business’ complaints policy. In addition to this, we can review the firm’s full complaints history to identify any trends in grievances that highlight areas for concern and improvement, and have a full discussion review with management to introduce preventative measures. We can also assess your firm’s grievances procedures to check their efficiency and compliance with employment law regulations. 

Intuitive Legal can conduct a review and ongoing monitoring of independence for third party and referred relationships. We can also undertake monitoring for group contagion and review separate business compliance. 

Intuitive Legal offer a comprehensive project plan for business’s, including entities regulated by the FCA and SRA, which takes a broad look at the firm’s risk and compliance structure in its entirety. 

In order to grow the business, you must recognise the need to enhance your risk and compliance framework to allow the business to manage risk effectively and demonstrate compliance to the SRA. 

Intuitive Legal work with the firm’s management in developing a project plan focusing on key gaps within the overall risk and compliance framework. We analyse a range of key areas within the business, including risk management and reporting, AML compliance, Financial Crime, Data Protection and third-party arrangements. The plan also draws out any potential resources that are required to implement the changes that are required within the business.