What's the issue?
At 12.8%, employers' national insurance (NI) contributions are an unwelcome additional cost to any business.

How can we help?
Taking on self-employed contractors for specific projects, rather than recruiting new staff will save employers NI contributions. But, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) takes a very limited view when considering whether that contractor really is self-employed for tax purposes. Note, particularly, that it doesn't matter how many other companies the contractor also works for, HMRC only cares about the contract with your company.

A salary sacrifice scheme is a way of getting benefits to employees while saving tax and National Insurance: theirs and yours, saving the company an immediate 12.8%, compared with paying the cash equivalent. The range of benefits is varied – companies have included bus travel, childcare arrangements, pension contributions, bicycles, and lunch.

Why choose Wragge & Co?
We have the experience to make sure your business's contracts with self-employed contractors are right, and that the contracts and the reality of the work match up. Our tax experts can also help with the careful structuring of salary sacrifice schemes.

What's the issue?
Fighting a dispute can be an expensive and lengthy business. Before heading into battle, it is important to have the right strategy and tactics, plus a good idea of how much it is going to cost and who will ultimately foot the bill. If you are pursuing or on the receiving end of an unwelcome claim, ask yourself

• Do you want the cash flow/costs risk of funding a piece of litigation?
• Can you afford to pay costs?

How can we help?
Wragge & Co's dispute resolution specialists offer a number of funding options tailored to your situation. These include

• Funding from third parties
• Obtaining insurance cover from insurance companies to protect against opponent's costs, disbursements and legal charges
• Entering into a risk-sharing arrangement
• Litigation funding

Why choose Wragge & Co?
Because we put our money where our mouth is! Our dispute resolution specialists are experts at what they do and have the confidence to act for clients on conditional fee agreements, helping them achieve a successful outcome to the litigation. We know the litigation insurance market and its products well, and will be able to advise you on the most appropriate litigation funding for your situation.

What's the issue?
Resource and time pressures mean that for many companies and their in-house counsel, company secretarial matters fall to the bottom of the pile. Failing to comply can lead to financial and criminal sanctions, affecting reputation and business.

How can we help?
Wragge & Co's dedicated six-lawyer Company Secretarial team, including qualified chartered company secretaries, eases the headache of dealing with the complicated and time-consuming demands of corporate governance for private companies. This frees up businesses and their in-house counsel to concentrate on other priorities.

Why choose Wragge & Co?
We take a practical, hands-on approach. Following a major acquisition, a team member moved to the client's office to undertake auditing duties for more than 70 subsidiary companies. As well as highlighting discrepancies in the registers and bringing all Companies House filings up to date, we gave the client comfort that its house was in order.

If clients want a seamless service, incorporating all company secretarial duties, we provide that for a fixed fee. If it's flexibility that clients want, we can adapt our basic service.

What's the issue?
Most companies with final salary pension schemes are facing deficits which, despite significant contributions paid into the schemes, have not been eliminated as expected and, in some cases, have increased.

The uncertainty, volatility and overall cost of providing final salary benefits are not sustainable for many companies in the current trading environment. Companies are increasingly faced with the choice of reducing their pension costs or making cuts elsewhere (which can often mean more job losses).

How can we help?
There are various options open to companies seeking to manage pensions costs. These range from changing the rate of final salary accrual or moving to a career average basis of accrual, to increasing employee contributions or terminating pensionable service for all members.

Whether or not the options outlined above can be effectively implemented will often depend on the provisions of the scheme rules, the relationship the company has with the trustees of the scheme, the terms of the employment contracts of affected individuals and the workplace representatives. We can help with member communications and consultation as well as setting up a Career Average Revaluated Earnings (CARE) or Defined Contributions (DC) scheme.

Why choose Wragge & Co?
Wragge & Co has a team of lawyers who specialise in providing combined pensions, employment and HR legal advice to HR professionals, in-house-legal teams and finance directors. These lawyers are highly skilled employment and pensions lawyers. One combined human resources solutions lawyer can advise on all the legal complexities of moving from defined benefits to defined contributions.

Our clients rely on us for legal advice on all aspects of strategic workplace issues. Examples include providing legal advice in relation to an EU-based client on the move to career average benefits for around 5,000 active members of nine UK final salary pension schemes. We did this on an informed consent basis while managing to avoid industrial action with the three unions covering 35 participating employers.

What's the issue?
A 'quick fix' for construction disputes, adjudication has become more widespread as a method of dispute resolution within the construction industry. In the current economic climate its appeal to some sectors of the industry has increased even further. There has been a noticeable rise in the number of disputes referred to adjudication this year.

In theory, an adjudicator should reach his decision within 28 days from the date that the dispute was referred to him. In reality, adjudication is not always that fast. The process is often extended to 42 days or more if, for example, the issues cannot be dealt with in a simple exchange of referral and response, and multiple pleadings are necessary.

Whether you're the referring party or on the receiving end, adjudication means an all-consuming, intense, and sometimes prolonged, period of activity. Costs cannot usually be recovered so the efficient management of resources and control of the budget, particularly the legal spend, is crucial.

How can we help?
We can't fix the adjudicator's decision for you, but we can help you to manage your legal expenditure by agreeing a fixed fee for the adjudication, based on an agreed scope of work. This will help you ensure the costs of dealing with your adjudication remain proportionate to the value of the dispute and the issues involved.

Every adjudication is different. We will work with you to understand what your adjudication will involve and to allocate resources to the different tasks. Your own team may want to undertake a lot of the work in-house or you may need more input from us. Either way, we will give you certainty on costs by tailoring our fee to meet your specific needs - and then fixing it.

Why choose Wragge & Co?
Our experienced and specialist Construction team (which includes two former quantity surveyors) is well-versed in the conduct of adjudications of all shapes and sizes, acting for contractors, sub-contractors and employers. As a result, we are familiar with many of the adjudicators on the circuit and their different approaches to adjudication.

This expertise can help you determine your strategy and tailor your submissions in the adjudication. We can mobilise into action when you need us to, for a reasonable and fixed fee.

What's the issue?
In a nutshell – managing risk. When trading conditions become tougher, several things tend to happen. Suppliers might run into financial difficulties, making them unable to fulfil their obligations. Customers wanting to hold on to their cash for as long as possible may delay payment. The risks of suppliers and customers going bust, leaving you out of pocket, increase. You could find yourself heading into litigation before you have had a chance to think about the cost/benefit ratio or how to avoid the dispute altogether.

How can we help?
RiskAssess is Wragge & Co's approach to dispute resolution – pragmatic, creative, cost-effective legal advice and solutions. By asking the right questions at the very outset, our dispute resolution experts provide an up-front assessment of your position and prospects of success. With such an early assessment of the likely risks and rewards, you'll have a strategy that covers all the angles and puts you in control.

RiskAssess is all about maintaining a tight hold on costs. It weeds out claims unlikely to succeed, saving the time and costs inherent in litigation. But if going to court is the best option, we can also use accurate fee estimating and innovative fee structures like conditional fee arrangements and insurance to help clients retain cost control.

Why choose Wragge & Co?
RiskAssess helps side-step problems, so you can concentrate on running your business. It asks: "What is your ideal outcome?" and works back from there. We advised a client that a "termination event" under a multi-million pound contract was going to happen. The client wanted to know what it could do and the risks involved. Our specialists came up with a series of strategic options, one of which is now being implemented.

We have also made reaching our disputes experts easier than ever. RADAR – Risk: Analyse, Decide and Respond - is a new, online tool enabling users to brief us on a dispute. All you have to do is fill in a simple online form, providing details of your problem. Our experts will give you an initial assessment of your options at no cost within 24 hours of receiving the information.