We do not offer unlimited review. We offer four documents a month, on a fixed clock.

What the retainer is

The retainer runs the same four verification passes used in the pre-publication audit, applied on a standing basis rather than to a single document. Once the engagement begins, the client sends documents as they arrive: proposals, tenders, term sheets, financing memoranda, counterparty contracts, board papers submitted by a third party. Whatever document type is fixed at intake is what the retainer covers. Nothing outside that scope is reviewed without a separate agreement.

There is no ramp-up period beyond the intake conversation. The clock on the first document starts the day the retainer is signed.

What is excluded

The retainer produces findings. It does not act on them. Three boundaries hold in every engagement:

• No drafting. A finding identifies the defect and its location. Writing the replacement clause is the client’s own counsel’s work, not ours.
• No negotiation. We do not sit at the table opposite a counterparty on the client’s behalf.
• No litigation support. Where a finding leads to a dispute, representation remains with the client’s own counsel. The Academy provides explanation and recognition training only.

This keeps the retainer priced for volume rather than for exposure, and is the reason four documents a month can be reviewed at a fixed fee rather than an hourly one.

Why four, not unlimited

The retainer covers four documents a month. Not “unlimited within reason,” not “as capacity allows”: four, stated in the agreement, the same four every month.

A fixed number does three things an unlimited promise cannot do:

• It prices honestly. An unlimited retainer is priced against an assumed average that both sides quietly know is wrong the first month volume spikes. A fixed number is priced against itself, exactly once, and the number does not move.
• It is a claim, not an aspiration. “Four documents, forty-eight hours each” can be tested against the delivery log at any point in the relationship. “Unlimited, best efforts” cannot be tested against anything.
• It forces the client to prioritise. A capacity of four a month means the client decides which four documents in a given month actually need independent review, rather than sending everything and letting volume substitute for judgment. That decision, made monthly, is itself a governance discipline the retainer produces as a side effect.

How a document moves through the retainer

1. Submission. The client sends the document, unedited, in the form it was received or drafted.
2. Intake check. Confirmed against the document types fixed at the start of the engagement. Anything outside scope is flagged before review begins, not after delivery.
3. The four passes. Run against the document as submitted: vocabulary, arithmetic, structure and contract, at the same depth used in the pre-publication audit.
4. Findings. Numbered, sourced, and each one anchored to the sentence, clause or figure it concerns. Delivered within forty-eight hours of receipt.
5. Register. Every finding is added to a running log held against the client’s account, so a pattern across five months of proposals from the same counterparty becomes visible on the sixth.

Capacity, overflow and price

A month with no documents submitted is still billed at the full fee. The retainer prices standing coverage, not a count of documents delivered. Four is the ceiling the price is set against, not a target the client is expected to reach.

Entry: two paths

Most clients arrive at the retainer from the Session: ninety minutes against a single document the board has already approved surfaces enough unanswered questions that a standing arrangement follows naturally, usually within the same board cycle.

The retainer is also sold directly, without a prior session. In that case the engagement opens with a scoping call rather than a live document review: what gets submitted, who submits it, and which of the client’s internal reviewers receives the findings. The intake conversation and the first month’s fee cover this call. No separate charge applies.

Where the retainer leads

After roughly six months, a client on retainer has usually seen findings against twenty or more real documents and has a working sense of where its own process lets weak drafting through. That is the point at which the Workshop becomes the natural next step: the same four passes, taught to the client’s own team rather than run on the client’s behalf, so recognition moves in-house. The retainer does not require this transition. Clients who prefer standing coverage over transfer continue on the same terms indefinitely.

How it begins

Engagements begin with a scoping call. Write with the document types involved, the internal reviewer who will receive findings, and, if one exists, the document that prompted the enquiry.