British Marine BusinessCare

Unlimited 24-hour access to a legal helpline
Whatever the issue, you are only a telephone call away from a member of the BusinessCare legal team, who can offer practical advice and support to help you deal with the issue. The telephone service covers general business advice, employment, health & safety, tax and VAT and much more.

Comprehensive law guide
In addition to the helpline, the comprehensive jargon-free online law guide will help you get to grips with the law and understand your legal rights and obligations.

Create legal documents
You'll also get access to a sophisticated user-friendly online documentation system, which enables you to create all the legal documents you will need - quickly and simply. From employment agreements to health and safety compliance review and policy creation, you can ensure you are fully compliant with the law. Documents are created online using an intuitive system which 'interviews' you and automatically tailors the document for your circumstances.

Legal document review
For extra peace of mind, all of the legal documents you create on the website can be sent via the system to the BusinessCare legal team to check and amend if necessary. All for free!

Stay up to date with changes in legislation
Sign up to monthly business bulletins by email, which cut through the legal jargon to provide a practical, easy to understand summary of the changes that might affect you.

Online legal health check
Assess your legal needs, identify risks and also how BusinessCare can help to protect your business interests.

Helping to save you £100s on legal fees
BusinessCare is a service provided as part of your British Marine membership at no extra cost. We want to make law easy and accessible for you. You can create as many documents as you need to and can call for legal advice as many times as you need to with any legal query in relation to your business. It’s all included in your membership.

The providers of BusinessCare are Epoq Legal Ltd; an SRA regulated law firm. This is an important distinction between BusinessCare and other online legal services, which may not be SRA regulated.

All of the legal clauses in all of the documents have been drawn up by highly experienced lawyers and solicitors. When documents are submitted online for legal review, those reviews are carried out by experienced lawyers, with 20 years or more experience.

BusinessCare is designed to support your business at every point as it grows and includes documents, guides and advice covering the following needs:

• Starting-up including partnership, shareholders' and consultancy agreements
• Taking on and managing employees including employment contracts, employee handbooks and discipline and dismissal procedures
• Health and safety compliance including risk assessments and health and safety policy creators
• Trading including commercial agreements, privacy policies and terms and conditions
• Protecting ideas including non-disclosure agreements

If you have a query about any aspect in relation to your business, you can call the legal advice line at any time and speak to a lawyer who will give you jargon-free practical legal advice.

Some of the most popular reasons people call for advice include:

• Employment and HR advice
• Contractual issues with suppliers and customers
• Debts (either being in debt or collecting debts from customers)
• Business start-up advice
• Protecting your business

BusinessCare offers you a joined-up service, with the same lawyers staffing the legal helpline in office hours that review the legal documents, so you can call for advice on the documents you are using on the service if you need to.

“But I wanted an expert to draft a legal document for me - not use a DIY tool. I have no legal knowledge or time to do it myself.”

• We don’t expect members of the British Marine to be lawyers; you’re experts in your own field. BusinessCare designed its tools to be used by anyone - with no legal knowledge needed at all.
• BusinessCare have simplified the process of creating legal documents so that it is easy and quick.
• Essentially, the system interviews you instead of a lawyer doing it face to face so it’s not all that different to the process you’d experience by seeing a traditional law firm.
• The service is 24/7 so you can create documents or get legal advice at a time that suits you.
• You can save your progress and dip in and out of a document as many times as you need to.

When legal queries arise, many people avoid seeking specialist legal advice due to the fear of large bills. BusinessCare can save you thousands of pounds on legal fees, and enable you to produce high quality legal documents whilst ensuring you are fully compliant with the law. Using a solicitor or other professionals can prove expensive as the following examples show:

Legal documents and average cost: 

• Average settlement agreement = £715.00
• Directors service agreement = £612.50
• Consultancy agreement = £564.29
• Employee handbook = £984.70
• Employment agreement = £488.00
• Employment statement = £229.80
• Non-disclosure agreement = £250.00
• Partnership agreement = £580.50
• Shareholder agreement = £677.86

Total saving: £5,102 ex VAT

The comparable cost for legal advice

The cost for comparison for an hour of BusinessCare legal advice, which is unlimited and free to British Marine members is £190. This compares to an average hourly rate of solicitors of between £120 - £300 + VAT an hour. For further information click here.

British Marine members can get started today by registering to at www.mybusinesscare.com. You will need your 'scheme/policy number' which can be accessed here.

If you're not a member of British Marine and are interested in joining membership please contact us at info@britishmarine.co.uk or on 01784 473377.