Meet this Entrepreneur from the U.K. who is creating a revolution and offering innovative business solutions and services to entrepreneurs around the world. She is offering a FREE LEGAL HEALTH CHECK UP for our KATHA-Stories Unheard website subscribers, please read through details mentioned at the end of this story.
Have you heard one of the famous quotes by the famous Peter Drucker? He said:
“The Entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity”.
This entrepreneurial story features one such entrepreneur who converted challenging times into opportunity and has evolved from the traditional approach of her profession and has rocketed it to a new level. Can you pause for a moment and guess which profession are we referring to? It is the Legal Profession. The convergence of the global financial crisis, a remarkable acceleration of technological advances, and globalization has produced a climate conducive to legal entrepreneurs.
With time every profession has evolved and continues to evolve to meet the changing market and consumer needs, and so has the profession of Law changed. We have said good bye to those days when lawyers were seen only in traditional roles with formal offices, hourly rates and reactive solutions. This new generation of lawyers is evolving and seeding revolution and entrepreneurship into the community in a big way. There is a raft of self employed lawyers who are entering the entrepreneurship market and are tapping into the latent demand for access to legal services as well as expertise-differentiated by efficient, cost-effective, predictive, digitized, and scalable legal services and products. In this story you will meet one such lawyer entrepreneur who is creating all of this for her clients.
Meet Reina Menezes D’costa, Founder of Bizlaw U.K., a Holistic Legal and Business Services Consultancy based in London. They are legal experts who help start ups and entrepreneurs with all their legal and business needs and requirements as a one stop trusted service and can also help with personal legal issues. Reina is a passionate, practical and proactive UK Solicitor and holds a dual UK/India qualification, with Inhouse experience as Sole Legal Counsel, including advising multinationals internationally. She carries with her 20 years of rich legal experience and a proven track record of working with multinationals and start-ups and specializes in Business, Media and Entertainment Law. She has attained many achievements across new territories and services and featured in various publications such as Whereits@london, GRIT (Women Empowered), a Starling bank feature article, the Institute of Directors advice to startups, as well as on interviews online and as a speaker at the Startup Breakdown event this year . She has been invited to the House of Lords Events and the mayor of London Women Ethnic entrepreneurs panel as well as the Local council Business panel to feedback into what can be done better to help entrepreneurs. Bizlaw U.K. was a winner of SME News-Best Business and Legal Services Consultancy 2020 and Acquisition International’s Best Business Legal Consultancy Firm-UK. Reina’s clients have rewarded her with great testimonials and she is committedly working towards helping various businesses and its founders in all legal and allied matters.
As we began our conversation she recalls and shares one of her early memories which inspired and motivated her to start her own business. She said-
“During the last financial crises in 2012 I noted many were being made redundant and thus starting their own companies. More over a study conducted by the Law Society found that not many startups and micro businesses used lawyers, either because of cost, lack of awareness of what they needed to have strong legal foundations for a business or the formalities involved. This triggered and inspired me to set up my own business to help such businesses. As a business owner and both a provider and buyer of legal services I was commercially savvy and wanted to offer a practical, proactive and personalized service".
“Converting Challenges Into Opportunity”
Reina’s entrepreneurial journey began in the year 2012 when the world was sinking into a financial crises and many people were made redundant from their jobs. Reina closely observed the changes that were taking place around in the world and a spark ignited in her which generated a great business idea. She decided to fuel that business idea and backed it with a business plan, research and immense hard work. She made up her mind to turn those challenging times and convert her business idea into reality. She spent time and energy to understand the rapidly changing world and its needs, researched and understood the business market. As a result of which she realized that not many startups and micro businesses used lawyers either because of cost, lack of awareness or formalities involved and she decided to fill that gap by offering services and helping founders with their legal needs and requirements such as business plan creation, funding and getting HMRC advance assurance for venture capital, accountancy, managing staff and finally finding buyers and sellers for a business which is the complete life cycle with the assistance of regularly vetted specialists.
With immense passion and courage, she decided to start her business and founded Bizlaw U.K which is a holistic legal and business services consultancy. They match providers of remote services such as self-employed experts with micro-businesses so that both sides benefit from avoiding time spent in travel while providing and accessing cost-effective services without the overheads. Reina realized that time is precious to us all and technology allows for all methods of service provision which need not necessarily be local.
As a first step towards starting her own business she set up a limited company, got her own invoicing platform, designed and drafted her website, fixed the terms and conditions of services, trademark registration, ICO registration, affiliations and sales and from there on she has never looked back.
“Tiny drops of water makes a mighty ocean”
Reina strongly believes in making consistent efforts and growing in a slow and steady way. After taking the big step of starting off, it was time for her to get new clients. Starting off as a first-generation entrepreneur was one of the biggest challenges she faced, but her goodwill, rich contact base (she was voted as one of the most connected women lawyers by Linked In), expertise and business acumen got her one client after another. Reina’s approach is extremely customer centric as she understands the problems, the business goals and the mindset of the entrepreneur and attempts to provide a personalized service with fixed and flexible pricing to help solve them, without the formalities. All of this made her get new clients and most of her initial clients were through “word of mouth” publicity.
Reina then went on to have vetted professionals on her panel who now assist clients via phone and emails and the consultants have a wide range of expertise and have helped many clients. Bizlaw U.K. thus also offer ongoing support and provide value-added introductions and offers from trusted business partners in accountancy, funding, insurance, and a wide range of business services to help a business thrive. Talking about her business growth strategy she says:
“Initially, we grew our client base from word of mouth referrals and through trial and error are proud to state that we have consultants covering all areas of law as well as provide value-added services like funding, accountancy business plans, insurance etc.. and personal services like advice on property, immigration and family matters too, to tap into as well as having helped 100's of clients and having 5 star testimonials”.
Till date the team have proudly served and helped 100’s of clients and businesses with their legal needs and continue to grow. Talking about how she has sustained her business during the challenging times of covid, where Bizlaw U.K. even offered free legal health checks to local Harrow businesses in partnership with the Council, she says:
“As ours is anyway an online business, we were not majorly affected, but invested time when business was slow, in marketing and populating our YouTube channel and podcast with useful legal advice videos and blogs and are proud to note we have over 10,000 views of our podcasts and a 323% rise in organic searches”.
Running her own business has given Reina the decision-making power and flexibility with work life balance and she is committedly working towards expanding her business in a slow and steady manner. In the last 20 years Reina has faced many challenging situations but she maintains a highly positive mindset and celebrates every small success as a sole female business owner, which helps her keep going. She is proud of the achievement of being listed on the UK Advisors Inward Investment Directory, poised to assist international businesses interested in expanding into the UK and also UK businesses expanding overseas, due to connections with international advisors too.
Advice To Entrepreneurs- Go pursue your dream if you are passionate, build patience and resilience, have financial backing, a clear but flexible business plan and most importantly identify a USP for your business and trusted partners.
Examples of work done for some of Bizlaw U.K. clients:
Case Study 1
Virgin Entrepreneur client approached us to assist on a retainership.
They produced a healthy kids world foods tiffin.
They had a problem with a service provider as no clear terms of the contract had been entered into and no clear expectations were laid out in writing either.
A dispute based on a claim for overpayment of 14,000/- GBP was made. Now if a claim is under 10,000/-GBP legal costs are not recoverable as it becomes a small claim, so where we could help resolve the issue through the interpretation of documents, send out a notice if required, and organize a mediation meeting ie. pre-action protocol, this was useful.
We could also provide advice on and draft water tight future contracts to avoid such issues.
We could advise on marketing regulations and trademark registrations.
Case Study 2
An International TV channel wanted to launch into the UK
An Ofcom license was required for this. We Provided advice on change of structure to obtain the license and reporting once license obtained.
Advice on music licenses (PRS)
We could also provide advice on contracts with distribution companies like Sky
Possible advice on airtime sales contracts with advertisers
Could provide advice on ASA (Advertising standards compliance) regulations
Could provide advice on subscription terms and data protection of subscribers if pay TV model.
Know More about Reina:
What is your business philosophy- Prevention is Better Than Cure.
When I face a big challenge- I problem solve.
My greatest fear is- The health and safety of my family.
The most courageous thing I’ve ever done is- Putting myself out there.
If I could go back in time to when I was 20 I would tell myself-Believe in myself.
I believe in- It’s not just what you know but who you know.
The biggest lesson I have ever learned is- You cannot depend on others for your happiness.
My favourite business tool or resource is-social media
My favourite quote is-Where there is a will there is a way.
Free Legal Health checkup for KATHA-Stories Unheard Website Subscribers (If you are not a subscriber yet, you can become a subscriber and avail this opportunity)
To reach out a helping hand during these tough times of covid , we would be happy to offer a Free legal health check to entrepreneurs and be like your inhouse legal team without the overheads . I am an experienced solicitor with good testimonials , who specialises in assisting businesses with being risk free and will be offering this service. Don't worry as you don't need to prepare any documents or send anything to us.
This will be a pre arranged phone consultation of Upto 30 minutes, designed to have a discussion about any historical or future commercial/corporate legal issues your business might have. During the discussion we can review whether the business has the right legal and contractual foundations for being risk free, is ready for expansion, attracting investment, preparing for sale or even providing new products and services. Areas that can be covered include:
• Shareholder agreements • Customer and key supplier contracts • Key employment contracts • Business acquisition/disposal • Asset protection • Disputes • Terms and conditions • Service agreements etc.
The upto 30 minute phone consultation can be scheduled between 9 am until 3 pm any working day. Please let us know if you or someone in your team is interested in availing of this offer and if so what days and times work. Even if you have an inhouse legal team , it would be nice to connect with them to assist when they need an additional pair of hands at busy and stressful times like these. Please Wattsapp Reina on 07583452230 to take up this offer.
A BIG Thank you to Reina for offering this FREE service to our subscribers. We wish Reina heaps of success. If you wish to avail of the services of Bizlaw U.K. or just have a free business health check , check out their 5 star ratings , find out about their range of services or access their social media platforms for useful updates in the law, please visit https://www.bizlawuk.co.uk/