Cleardocs.co.uk responds to employers' needs by launching innovative ‘Your Solicitor’ legal employment helpline in conjunction with Ashfords LLP Solicitors

• ‘Your Solicitor’ legal employment helpline designed to help small to medium sized employers handle specific and often complex & expensive legal employment matters
• Entrepreneurs, start-ups and small business owners demand the same quality of legal employment advice and on-going service as their corporate counterparts
• On-going commitment to reducing the complexity and costs of legal employment documentation and related themes in England & Wales
  

9th June 2010 - the first-of-a-kind online legal resource for employers, Cleardocs www.cleardocs.co.uk , announces the introduction of the ‘Your Solicitor’ helpline in conjunction with Ashfords LLP Solicitors.

The legal employment helpline ‘Your Solicitor’ is just one of a series of initiatives that Cleardocs have introduced to help reduce the burden of the red tape surrounding small to medium sized businesses when employing and managing staff in England & Wales.

Cleardocs are innovators in the field of online documentation, and are the first company in the UK to combine sophisticated I.T. with the expertise of an established and leading law firm to provide innovative pay-as-you–go expert legal documentation. Additionally, the company was the first to provide a free helpline answered in real time with the provision of free initial legal support relating to the use or consequences of use of its documents.

Unlike many legal employment helplines currently available, ‘Your Solicitor’ provides business owners with access to named, fully qualified and experienced employment specialists - a position in opposition to  many existing legal employment helplines that are run via call centres and are often staffed with trainees or part-qualified solicitors.

Our customers told us that their priorities when dealing with legal employment matters are twofold:

• To handle and resolve the matter with sensitivity and professionalism, and
• To handle and resolve the matter as quickly as possible.
  

‘Your Solicitor’ is different because Cleardocs, as policy, engages with and listens to, its customers. Our customers told us that (from past experience with other legal employment helpline providers) they are ‘deeply frustrated’ by having to queue and wait indefinitely on-hold for an advisor when seeking to resolve legal matters concerning staff. Additionally, customers of Cleardocs told us that they felt ‘let down’, ‘disappointed’ and even ‘angry’  when they discovered that previous legal employment helpline providers structured the helpline so that subscribers were unable to speak to the same person more than once, and they are taking advice from trainee and part- qualified solicitors on highly sensitive and potentially litigious matters.

By comparison, some of the UKs corporate legal employment matters – even those dealt with via an ongoing employment helpline – are handled by fully qualified, experienced and named employment specialists: as a Cleardocs’ customer explains “Why should we, entrepreneurs, start-ups and small business owners, settle for a standard of service that anyone else would reject just because we employ fewer people? Our staff are just as valuable, and we resent people cutting corners to make a fast buck at our expense”.

 Lisa Galbraith, Cleardocs group CEO said “We are very pleased to be able to offer an on-going, subscription based, legal employment advice and support scheme aligned to our legal documents. Our customers have told us how much they value the free legal support available to them when purchasing a document from Cleardocs via our partnership with Ashfords Solicitors and the Your Solicitor helpline is an extension of that expert support. We are proud to be able to offer this cost-effective and innovative service to our customers”.

Charles Pallot, Partner and Head of Employment at Ashfords LLP Solicitors, said “Our employment team likes to work with clients as soon as an employment problem arises, as dealing with matters as they crop up can save the client significant costs and management time in the long run."  He added:  "The 'Your Solicitor' helpline encourages members to pick up the 'phone if they have any employment law worries, with the security of knowing that the cost of that call is covered in their annual membership fee for the helpline.”


In line with Cleardocs commitment to reducing the complexity and cost of legal employment and related documentation, Cleardocs is talking to its customers, other small business owners and associated organisations in order to continue to provide the most appropriate additions to its products and services.


For more information visit www.cleardocs.co.uk or call Frances Critchlow on 0845 474 0372.

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About Cleardocs
Cleardocs was launched in Australia in June 2003 by plain English expert and former lawyer Christopher Balmford. Its unique document creation technology provides customers, including small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), law and accountancy firms and recruitment agencies, with a cost-effective online resource for employment legal documents and support.

Following its success in Australia (where it is now used by more than 3,000 professional accountants, financial planners and lawyers) the company has launched in the UK with a range of legal employment products.Uniquely, Cleardocs provides a free helpline for questions about their on-line document creation facility, and the leading UK law firm, Ashfords LLP, provide a legal helpline for queries about the documents that customers create on-line – making it the only service of its kind in the UK.
 

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