Standard Retainer

Premier Legal Support.


The Standard Retainer is a small weekly fee of $10 + GST paid to retain General Standards as your lawyers, and give you the legal support you need to grow from Australia's leading startup lawyers as you grow.

The Standard Retainer helps us keep the fees we charge for providing services as low as possible.

The Standard Retainer gives you:

  • Prioritised services.
  • 5% discount on all legal fees.
  • Capped Price Options - work on standard legal documents is charged at the lower of our fixed fee, or the value of the time spent on the matter (which can sometimes save over 50% on our fixed fees). 
  • Complimentary access to our extensive suite of standard legal documents - we don't provide templates, but we'll happily share our suite of precedents to give you a starting point on any document. We can then quickly tailor that document for you using our Capped Price Option.
  • Priority Online Scheduler to book consultations.
  • 3-5 business day turnaround on standard legal documentation.

    The Standard Retainer is charged to your nominated credit card or bank account weekly (via PayPal). You can cancel the Standard Retainer at any time.

    General Standards is proud of our reputation of providing truly expert services to startups at significantly lower prices than other firms, and the Standard Retainer will help us continue to offer the best value startup legal services in Australia.

Please click here to enter your payment details for the Standard Retainer.

If you have any further questions (see our FAQs below) simply email the team at australia@generalstandards.co.



FAQs


Why charge the Standard Retainer?

General Standards is focused on helping as many startups as possible. In fact, since 2013 we've helped over 1,000 startups launch and grow. There's no doubt our low fees have been a reason so many startups choose General Standards.

The costs of looking after 1,000+ clients begin to add up, as we need to have experienced startup lawyers on hand to respond to our client needs. To be able to offer timely, professional services, we either had to increase our fees (which really means charging new startups more money and defeating our purpose of helping startups get started) or share that cost evenly across all our clients - and we chose the latter.

As far as we can tell, something like the Standard Retainer has actually never been done before - a small fee charged to all clients instead of increased charge out rates. 

The Standard Retainer includes some cool technology as well, namely digital cap tables and online brand monitoring (which alone would cost more than the Standard Retainer).


What happens if I don't want to pay the Standard Retainer?

We understand that the Standard Retainer won't make sense for every client straight away.

If you just order a trust or company, or purchase a one-off service, we appreciate that the Standard Retainer won't be necessary.

Without the Standard Retainer, there are no discounts on our fees, no capped pricing, no access to our document suite and generally our response and turn around times will be a little longer (as we give priority to our Standard Retainer clients).

We may require a client to take up the Standard Retainer as part of our agreement to provide services, especially on larger matters such as a capital raising.



Can I cancel the Standard Retainer?

You can cancel the Standard Retainer at any time. Should you rejoin at a later stage, your discount on legal fees may no longer apply. This is only to avoid anyone gaming the Standard Retainer, turning it on and off simply to enjoy the discount. In genuine circumstances we will be happy to allow clients to "suspend" the Standard Retainer, and take it back up will full entitlements when ready.



How much time/work is included in the Retainer?

The Standard Retainer does not include any allowance for legal work. Fees and charges will still apply for all work performed, although you receive the benefit of a discount on legal fees, capped pricing and complimentary access to our standard legal documents.

Thank you!


General Standards Australia Pty Ltd
ABN 62 600 373 653
Melbourne: 231 Chapel Street Prahran VIC 3181
Sydney: 55 Brisbane Street Surry Hills NSW 2010
All Post: GPO Box 3393 Melbourne VIC 3001
Web: generalstandards.co

Liability limited by a scheme approved
under Professional Standards Legislation