May 2023 Newsletter

I am delighted to invite you to read our first Kennedy Cater, Private Sector, newsletter. We will be publishing a newsletter each quarter and hope you find them useful and interesting. We will take the opportunity to update you on topical events, legal updates, and business milestones.

Since establishing Kennedy Cater in 2006, you, our clients have always been at the core of what we do. We are very proud and thankful that you have stuck by us and supported us for all these years. I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our new clients and welcome them to the Kennedy Cater family.

As you will read in this newsletter, the Kennedy Cater private sector team has continued to evolve and grow. We have added exceptional professionals to our team, elevated our data protection offerings, added resources to the Tech sector generally (with SaaS specifically) and expanded into new regions. We have also invested in our operations and processes and are constantly working to streamline and achieve efficiencies. We believe that when we are efficient, you are efficient. Another notable milestone this year is our partnership with Lawcadia, a spend management legal platform, which provides us and our clients with complete visibility over external legal spend. You can read more about Lawcadia in this newsletter.

For me personally, each day provides an opportunity to reflect on our vision and values, which we will never compromise on: to provide our clients, the best value and quality legal services they rightly deserve.

With best wishes
Peter Morel

We are thrilled to announce that due to the success of the KC “outsourced in-house legal” proposition our team is growing. We have had 4 new lawyers join our ranks in April/May 2023, with more to come.

The 4 new joiners have all been carefully selected for their seniority and experience. They have had significant experience both in private practice but also in-house, operating across various sectors from startups to multinational FTSE and Nasdaq listed organisations. As a result, they understand how businesses want to receive practical, commercial and results-orientated legal advice. Our new team players help KC widen and deepen its legal expertise in tech, commercial, corporate, CoSec, IP and privacy as well as branching out into the German market.

But that’s not all…

We have also recently hired an additional 2 employees who are focused on the operational side of KC. Their role is to ensure that, as KC scales and grows, we have the appropriate processes and policies in place to continue to deliver the best value legal advice and legal procurement services for our clients, to keep our client’s satisfaction high and to retain the “personal touch” that KC is praised for.

Please join us in welcoming all 6 new joiners: Poh-Leng Devare, Dr Boris Boersch, Michelle Sanches, Kirstin Ejsmont, Allison Pemberton and Jen Kitson. Please check out our website here for more details on each of our new team members.

The FCA’s Consumer Duty will apply to firms across the financial services industry from July 2023 with far-reaching implications even for firms with no direct retail contact. This amounts to the largest shift in a decade in the FCA’s expectations of firms' treatment of retail customers and will encompass both retail and wholesale firms.

The FCA has linked the Duty to its three-year Strategy and the overarching outcomes it is looking to achieve for consumers of retail financial services in line with the Consumer Principle that firms must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.

Firms should take reasonable steps to comply with specific aspects of the Duty, taking into account the nature of the products or services being offered, the characteristics of the relevant retail customers and the firm’s role in relation to the product or service. They are not expected to take responsibility for the actions of other firms in the distribution chain.

1. Determine which of their business lines are in scope

2. Analyse what additional obligations the Duty imposes on their business

2. Analyse what additional obligations the Duty imposes on their business

4. Create and execute a programme of change based on the four outcomes of

ensuring clear lines of responsibility and accountability for delivery.

Please reach out if we can help you navigate through any actions needed.

Kennedy Cater has recently undergone a technological change in how we report and review our clients’ legal spend. We have partnered with Lawcadia, an Australian-based technology company, to create the Kennedy Cater Spend Management Platform.

The unique two-sided Platform, with an intelligent automation engine, allows Kennedy Cater and clients alike to collaborate and exchange information via the Platform. The Platform allows both us and our clients to benefit from streamlined workflows, accurate instructions, including time recording, invoicing, invoice approvals, greater control of budgets and project management coupled all with the benefit of exceptional reporting analytics for our clients.

The Platform has transformed the way both we and our clients work. We are able to ensure client instructions are sufficiently detailed for optimal results, control the appropriate firm selection and engagement of law firms for our clients, obtain competitive RFP and price estimates from our panel firms, manage multiple fee structures on behalf of our clients (including fee estimates, fixed fees and capped fees), as well as collaborate and review with both our clients and panel firms in order to agree on a scope of work and budgets up front. In addition, through the Platform, we are able to track estimated legal spend compared to actual spend by each matter. In addition, we are able to closely monitor major projects and report back to clients with the most up to date cost and project information.

The Platform provides many benefits to our clients in terms of efficiencies and reporting insights. For more information, please contact us.

ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) is increasingly becoming critical for businesses worldwide.

It is clear that ESG now impacts business strategy. It drives investor and consumer confidence, as well as influencing investment strategies. It is also an important consideration for risk management, recruitment, and marketing. Younger professionals and graduates appear to be keenly aware of ESG issues and their importance. It is suggested that they prefer to see their paymasters sharing those values.

This expectation feeds through to customers and investors. Businesses with behaviours that fail to adapt to consumer and investor expectations are likely to see a drop in demand for their goods and/or services in the medium to long term.

Regulators also appear to be slowly imposing ESG into the business area. We have the Environment Act, the various COP Meetings, and net zero commitments being promised by governments. Very recently we have seen new sustainability reporting rules for listed companies being introduced.

Businesses can measure themselves or publish their ESG ‘compliance’ using a variety of tools, such as applying for B Corps accreditation, employing diversity policies at board level and in the workplace, reporting on the gaps in pay in respect of gender, disability and ethnicity, and use of sustainable resources.
It follows then that ESG is here to stay in the business world. There will be costs challenges in achieving a sensible ESG balance and implementing certain policies may prove challenging.

However, the ESG trend is such that Companies can no longer make decisions based on financial factors alone. Profit goals must now be viewed with long-term sustainability in mind in order to keep all stakeholders happy.

Please contact us for assistance on your ESG journey.

Ngoar is a pioneering software solutions and technology company with UK offices in London and Brighton, and development centres in Ukraine and Poland. Since its launch in 2010 it has grown from a start-up to a scale-up and a thriving medium-sized enterprise. Companies they’ve worked with include banks, management,
engineering and development consultancy, crypto and gaming and many more.

Kennedy Cater and Susan Sweny, Commercial Contractors Director, have been working very successfully with Ngoar since 2016. The arrangement is based on a retainer relationship with dedicated hours provided by Susan who acts as Ngoar’s outsourced General Counsel.

She can be approached for support on all matters relating to legal, commercial, operational, corporate and employment issues. In any matters where she feels she’s unable or not qualified to provide a solution she can refer it to another Kennedy Cater team member or qualified third-party and facilitate progress through her knowledge and understanding of the company and its people.

The benefits of this working partnership are many for Ngoar.

They get access to first-class legal counsel whenever they require it without having to pay huge fees. This means great value for money and a great level of service.

Susan has become very much part of the Ngoar team and has developed a very good understanding of their business. She’s adept at dealing with people at all levels within their organisation from C-Level and senior management to new talent joiners.

Comprehensive and thorough legal advice that touches all parts of the business not just pure legal. This includes operations, commercial, risk management and good, old-fashioned sensible advice.

A long-term commitment to a partnership and personal relationship not another faceless service provider.

A personal touch that demystifies the legal process making expert advice as accessible and understandable as possible.

A dedicated friendly, single point of contact combined with access to other experts on the Kennedy Cater panel if ever needed.

‘ Appointing Kennedy Cater as our legal partner, with Susan Sweny as General Counsel, was one of the best business decisions Ngoar have made. It’s been a win-win for both companies. We get first-class legal advice and guidance from someone who genuinely understands our company aims and ethos. I hope the arrangement continues for many years to come.’ Peter Meadows, CEO, Ngoar

‘ Having access to Sue’s brilliant legal knowledge and wide range of experience has been enormously beneficial to so many aspects of Ngoar’s operations. By being helpful, pro-active and incredibly supportive she’s become a respected, highly valued, and much liked member of the team. The Kennedy Cater way of working is smart, lean and really delivers.’ .Mark Warren , Communications Director, Ngoar

We are delighted to share with you our new, enhanced Privacy as a Service solution.

Privacy laws apply to every industry every type of organisation of whatever size; whether private, public, non-for-profit, start-up or a large public company, this area cannot be ignored. Taking the right steps on the privacy journey, not only achieves legal compliance but also delivers:

1. Increased trust and credibility

2. Enhanced brand reputation

3. Mitigation of the risk of financial penalties

4. Competitive advantage

5. Better understanding of your data which leads to better data management, governance, and ease of data/business automation.

All of the above can be summed up in 3 words: more company value.

Each organisation will have its own unique requirements which are determined by the industry, risk posture, growth strategy, customers, size, resources, etc. Hiring privacy professionals can be costly and often the existing team becomes saturated. As a result, our clients have asked us to provide a solution that is both cost effective and answers their unique needs. We are therefore delighted that the new Kennedy Cater, Privacy as a Service was set up to meet this market need.

As well as Kennedy Cater’s own privacy professionals who can provide excellent privacy advice, we are proud to have partnered with Clayden Law, a leading firm specialising in IT and data protection, with significant experience in advising clients on all data protection matters. We are able to offer our clients a flexible, business driven, high quality privacy service. Clayden Law can help you navigate through the privacy compliance landscape, manage your notification obligations following a data breach, advise on your tech infrastructure, help you negotiate DPAs, advise on data transfers and much more.

Our Privacy as a Service packages allow our clients to sign up for complete privacy peace of mind with the following benefits:

For more info, please reach out to us.

We are very excited to have Dr. Boris Boersch join the Kennedy Cater team and allow us to support our clients in executing all of their legal needs in Germany. Boris is a business and entrepreneur-minded lawyer with more than 20 years of experience.

Anyone who has ever worked with Boris will immediately be struck with how straight forward, business minded, pragmatic and technically excellent he is. Boris loves nothing else than ensuring his national and international clients are successful in the region and to that end, will help them on commercial negotiations, structuring templates, assisting with legal compliance, early stage of service/product development and also labour law and corporate structuring. Whether it’s a SaaS company or manufacturing, Boris has seen it all.

Kennedy cater is very proud to offer our clients the excellent support of Dr. Boris Boersch.

Please reach out to us for more information.