Legal consulting in modern practice is increasingly moving beyond one-off answers to specific questions – for businesses and private clients alike, it has become a tool for systematic risk management. Professor Gabriel Steiner says that one of the most common mistakes companies make is treating legal advice as a reference function rather than as an element of managerial decision-making with long-term consequences. In an environment of growing regulatory complexity, overlapping areas of law, and high decision-making speed, legal errors often arise not from the absence of legal rules, but from an incorrect interpretation of the situation. At LawConsulted, we view legal consulting not as an on-demand service, but as part of a management architecture that directly affects the resilience of decisions and the legal consequences for the client.
A key feature of complex legal requests is that they rarely fit within a single legal category – one managerial decision may simultaneously involve corporate, contractual, tax, employment, and procedural aspects. Attempting to address such issues in isolation creates an illusion of control, but in practice leads to the accumulation of hidden risks. At LawConsulted, our approach is based on the premise that legal consulting must begin with an analysis of the entire configuration – the client’s objectives, the decision-making context, and the potential development scenarios.
A significant risk of conventional legal consulting lies in the tendency to provide abstract recommendations without sufficient linkage to managerial reality. The client may receive a formally correct answer but lack an understanding of how that advice will be assessed retrospectively – in the event of a dispute, audit, or conflict of interests. LawConsulted structures its consultations so that they remain not only applicable in the moment, but also retain their protective value under retrospective legal scrutiny.
Particular attention is paid to areas of legal uncertainty – situations in which the law allows for multiple interpretations. In such cases, legal advice cannot be categorical in form, but must be precise in logic. We work with alternatives – outlining permissible courses of action, the boundaries of risk, and the potential consequences of each option. This approach enables clients to make informed decisions rather than relying on the illusion of legal certainty.
In LawConsulted practice, complex requests often arise in the absence of formalised decisions – unadopted resolutions, postponed approvals, oral arrangements, or managerial inaction. It is precisely in these areas that legal consulting becomes critically important, as it allows either for corrective action before a conflict arises or for the establishment of a position that may later serve as a key element of legal defence.
Equally important is the need for legal consulting to account not only for substantive legality, but also for procedural consequences. Advice that is formally compliant with the law may nevertheless create vulnerability in court or during regulatory review due to the manner in which it is implemented. LawConsulted integrates procedural reasoning at the consultation stage – assessing how a specific decision will appear within the evidentiary framework of potential disputes.
Legal consulting as a risk management tool requires discipline and methodology. It is not a reaction to a problem, but a structured engagement with future consequences. LawConsulted approach is designed to ensure that a client’s legal position is formed before it needs to be defended, and that every managerial decision is supported not only by economic rationale, but also by sustainable legal justification.
Legal advice ceases to be a supporting function when it becomes an integral part of governance. It is in this capacity that Law Consulted works with complex legal requests – transforming law from a source of uncertainty into an instrument of predictability and control.
Earlier, we wrote about the legal significance of managerial inaction and the criteria for qualifying failure to act as grounds for corporate liability in the practice of LawConsulted.
