Law firm Infuero launches a new offer on the Luxembourg market to meet the “à-la-carte” needs of entrepreneurs and startups in particular. We met with Claude Englebert, lawyer at the bar of Brussels and Luxembourg, and professor of digital law at the HEPL, to discuss this idea of lawyer as a service.
A lawyer with experience in IT is rare. Can you tell us more about your background?
That makes me a bit of an atypical animal on the market. I started my IT adventure in 1997 by founding several companies active in the development first, then hosting web applications. Managed services were also added to the activities of my companies. We were active in Belgium and Luxembourg.
Then in 2008, I joined Adobe Inc. as a product marketing manager for the ColdFusion software. The kind of offer you can’t refuse. I spent six crazy years there, which allowed me to travel more often than many rock bands, and above all to develop a very fine knowledge of life in a big company.
In 2013, I left Adobe and made the crazy choice to leave everything behind to go back to law school at the University of Liege. Four years on the benches of the university in the middle of students who were half my age was a fresh blow and allowed me to completely reconnect with this new generation, and understand its issues and its specific difficulties. Even today it is terribly useful in my relationship with my startup clients.
In 2017, I take the oath of attorney at the Brussels Bar, and in 2020 I joined the Luxembourg Bar. In January 2022, I founded Infuero, with the ambition to make it the law firm I would have dreamed of meeting when I was in a startup as well as in a large company.
What do you think are the most important legal needs of IT companies?
Good contracts for a start. It may sound a bit silly when you say it like that, but all too often I’m confronted with cobbled-together contracts that don’t address the issues they’re supposed to cover. And when a dispute arises, it’s a guaranteed head-on collision. Between the misunderstanding between what is a SaaS and a software license, the clauses referring to non-applicable foreign law, or even illegal provisions, it’s a bit of a mess.
Secondly, the RGPD is a subject that is often poorly mastered, which creates a legal insecurity that actors are not necessarily even aware of. The risks are numerous: administrative fines, damages, breach of contract, and even criminal proceedings in Belgium. In fact, once the main principles have been assimilated, good support is mainly a question of common sense and rigor.
And then I think that the need of companies, startups or not, IT or not, is to be able to benefit from advice allowing them to arbitrate their decisions in the fastest and most efficient way possible.
Finally, and this is crucial given the current circumstances, companies need to be able to benefit from efficient assistance in managing the payment of their invoices. Good contractual clauses to anticipate unpaid invoices, a good billing follow-up process, and efficient and cost-effective collection.
“No more timesheets, no more differences of interest, we walk hand in hand with them, and we love it.”
Claude Englebert, Founder & Lawyer at Infuero
You now offer a Lawyer as a Service. Can you tell us more about the offer?
There is nothing more frustrating for me than to intervene in a litigation file that is not going well because a client has taken an unfortunate initiative, which he would not have taken if he had consulted a lawyer before taking it. And the reason that was often given to me to explain this non-consultation prior to the initiative taken was the unknown cost of the lawyer’s intervention. How many times was I told that the issue was not the price, the “cost” of the lawyer, but rather the fact that we had no visibility on that cost, that we could not budget for it.
We wanted to find a way to make the lawyer the first partner for our clients. Make the lawyer the first choice, the last chance. And because I think what we have to sell to our clients is value, not time, we decided to completely abandon hourly billing.
From this was born Lawyer as a Service, LaaS, a subscription that allows you to call upon the advice and assistance of your lawyer, without time or quantity limits, for a monthly fee (€450 excluding taxes according to the law firm website description).
Unlimited consultations, assistance with RGPD compliance, assistance in case of personal data breach or access request, unlimited drafting and review of contracts, assistance in negotiating with customers, suppliers or partners, employment contracts and everything that goes with it, optimization of the company’s intellectual property, partnership agreement, and even pre-litigation management, everything is included. Basically, the subscription stops at the door of the courts. And even there, we do our utmost to avoid falling back into the concept of hourly rates by proposing flat rates and result-based fees.
We are extremely proactive in monitoring the legal situation for our clients, and we spontaneously propose solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had. We are there to help them improve their performance and control their risk. From what they tell us, we save them time, money, and peace of mind.
Since we started this service, it’s been a pleasure. For us and for our customers. No more timesheets, no more differences of interest, we walk hand in hand with them, and we love it.
What is your approach to the market? What kind of customers do you target?
Given my background in ICT, we obviously have a special relationship with startups, SaaS and software vendors, IT providers, web agencies, and cloud and hosting providers.
Companies specialized in recruitment, placement of consultants, but also relocation services, are also quite fond of our services and especially of LaaS. As well as trustees and accountants. Our very pragmatic approach to the RGPD is one of the main reasons for this, I believe.
Beyond consulting, we are especially careful to maintain a strong practice of litigation, and especially IT litigation in general, RGPD in particular. And there, it is as much the actors of the sector who entrust us with their interests… as their clients. This allows me to mobilize all the experience accumulated in my first life for the benefit of my new one.
Finally, we are so fond of mentoring and supporting business projects that we organize a breakfast at least once a month at Silversquare, during which we hold a free practical legal workshop. We also have a specific offer for startups with less than one year of experience. All this feeds our unlimited curiosity, so please don’t hesitate to come and present your project to us over a good cup of coffee, we love to discover and learn from them.
