Legal advice is too slow and too expensive. That's a choice, not a law of nature

I'll start with something the profession doesn't much enjoy admitting. Most legal advice is slower, more expensive and more evasive than it needs to be — and small businesses pay the heaviest price for a model that was never built with them in mind. I've worked in and around law firms for more than twenty years; I'm not guessing at this. I've watched it from the inside.

The useful insight is that none of it is inevitable. The slowness, the cost, the six pages of "on the one hand, on the other" — those aren't the natural state of legal advice. They're the predictable output of three specific choices about how a firm is built. Understand the three, and two things happen: you stop taking the bad experience personally, and you learn exactly what to look for — and ask for — to get a better one. So let me walk you through them, and then give you five things you can actually do about it.

Choice one: the pyramid

Most law firms are shaped like a pyramid, and it's a shape built around profit, not around you. A partner sits at the top. Beneath them, a widening base of junior, cheaper lawyers. The economics only work if the partner wins the client and then pushes the actual work as far down that pyramid as possible — because the gap between what a junior costs the firm and what you're billed for their time is where the profit is made. The trade has a name for it: leverage.

So the person who charms you in the first meeting is very often not the person who does your matter. You're won over by grey hair and gravitas, and then your file lands with someone three years qualified who you'll never speak to. They do their best, but they're learning on your problem, and every question they can't answer goes back up the pyramid and comes back down as another line on the bill. You pay for the education. None of this is anyone being dishonest — it's just what the pyramid does. But it means the seniority you thought you were buying quietly evaporates the moment you sign the engagement letter.

Choice two: the billable hour

Now layer on how most firms charge: by the hour. Sit with that, because it's genuinely perverse. Your lawyer's income goes up the longer your problem takes to solve. Efficiency costs them money. A quick, clean answer is, in pure commercial terms, a bad outcome for the firm.

I'm not suggesting lawyers deliberately spin things out — most don't. But incentives shape behaviour whether we admit it or not, and when there's no reward for speed and every reward for exhaustive thoroughness, you get thoroughness you didn't ask for and can't use: the extra memo, the belt-and-braces research, the meeting that should have been an email. The deeper cost is to trust. Every time your lawyer picks up the phone, part of your brain is wondering what the call will cost — a terrible basis for the one relationship where you most need to speak freely.

Choice three: defensive advice

Here's the one that costs you most, and it's the hardest to see. A great deal of legal advice is written not to help you decide, but to make sure the lawyer can never be blamed. You ask a straight question — "should I sign this?" — and you get six pages laying out every consideration, every risk, every "it depends," and, buried at the end, no actual recommendation.

That document is a fortress. Whatever happens next, the lawyer can point to the paragraph that covered it. It's professionally safe and practically useless, because you didn't need a catalogue of everything that could theoretically go wrong. You needed someone to look you in the eye and say "yes, sign it — but change clause 9 first." You were paying for judgement and got a disclaimer. Defensive advice is what you get from a lawyer who doesn't know your business well enough to have a view, or is too junior to risk one, or has simply been trained that the cardinal sin is to be wrong.

Five ways to get better value from any lawyer

Here's the practical part. You can't rebuild a firm's business model, but you can change how you buy from it. These five moves work with any solicitor, and they quietly filter the good ones from the rest, because a good lawyer says yes to all of them without flinching.

1. Ask for a fixed fee, and ask early. For any reasonably defined piece of work, ask what it will cost as a fixed fee before they start. A firm that can price the work up front usually understands it and is confident in it. A firm that will only talk in hourly rates and "it depends" is asking you to sign a blank cheque — and telling you something about how the relationship will feel.
2. Agree the scope in writing. Nail down exactly what's included and what isn't. "Review and advise on this contract" is not a scope; "review these terms, advise on the five points I've flagged, and mark up changes" is. A clear scope is what makes a fixed fee possible and stops the bill wandering.
3. Ask who actually does the work. Directly: "Will you be handling this, or will it be passed to someone else — and can I speak to whoever does?" You're not being difficult. You're buying continuity, and you have every right to know what you're getting.
4. Ask for the recommendation, not the memo. When advice comes back as a fence-sitting survey of the options, push: "I understand the considerations — what would you actually do in my position?" A good lawyer will tell you. That single question cuts through more defensive drafting than anything else you can say.
5. Make them tell you when you don't need them. Ask "is this something I even need a solicitor for?" and watch the answer. The good ones will happily point you to a template or tell you to handle it yourself when that's right — and that honesty is the best predictor you'll get of whether they're on your side.

"But you get what you pay for"

Let me deal with the obvious objection, because it's fair. Doesn't cheap legal advice mean bad legal advice? Notice the sleight of hand: the question quietly equates expensive with good, and they're not the same. Some of the sharpest lawyers I know work in small firms; some of the most expensive advice I've seen was also some of the most useless. What you want isn't cheap and it isn't lavish — it's value: senior judgement, delivered efficiently, priced so you know what you're getting. Good work is worth paying for. Paying more doesn't make it good.

Why this matters for smaller businesses especially

The quiet unfairness is that the quality of advice a business gets tends to track the size of its legal budget. A big corporate with an in-house team to translate the six-page memo can survive the traditional model. A ten-person company signing its biggest-ever contract can't — and arguably needs the advice read more carefully, because it can't afford to get it wrong. The law is identical for both. The only question is whether a firm is set up to give the smaller business a straight, senior, affordable answer, or to bill it. That distinction is the whole reason we built the firm the way we did.

Use the five questions above on whoever you're considering — us included. If you'd like to see how we answer them, come and have a conversation. The first one's on us, and if we don't think you need us, we'll say so.

This article is one solicitor's view and general information, not legal advice — always take advice on your own situation before acting. Buzz Solicitors is a trading name of AD Solicitors Limited, a recognised body regulated by the SRA (no. 8011228).

Robert Festenstein

Solicitor · Head of Legal, Buzz Solicitors

A solicitor with more than two decades' experience in commercial law, dispute resolution, insolvency and judicial review. Robert acts for businesses, directors and individuals on the matters that carry real consequence — and leads Buzz Solicitors.