Education Legal & HR Support Retainers
Whether you are leading a nursery, managing a multi-academy trust, running a further education college, steering a university, or overseeing an independent school, you are operating in one of the most demanding sectors in England and Wales. Every day brings a combination of opportunities and challenges — from meeting your educational mission and regulatory obligations to protecting your reputation and managing your people.
The legal landscape in the education sector is complex, constantly evolving and often unforgiving of mistakes. Safeguarding responsibilities are more stringent than ever, governance frameworks are under greater scrutiny, and institutions face increasing pressure to demonstrate compliance in areas ranging from equality to data protection. Added to this, staff management issues can quickly become high-profile, time-consuming and costly.
At Geldards, we’ve spent decades advising educational institutions across the country. We combine a deep understanding of the law with practical, real-world insight into how institutions function on the ground. Our advice is clear, prompt and aligned to your operational realities.
To give you maximum flexibility, we’ve developed two complementary retainer services
Retainer Services
- Geldards Education Legal Support Enhanced or Core Retainer– covers all areas of law affecting education providers except employment law and HR.
- Geldards Education Employment Law & HR Enhanced or Core Retainer – provides focused, sector-specific advice on staffing and HR issues.
For both the legal retainer and the employment law & HR retainer, you have two options depending on the level of support you require under each retainer: (1) our enhanced service, or (2) our core service.
Enhanced service
Our approach to our retainer services is to offer every retainer client a dedicated relationship manager who will also act as their principal advisor, advising on most of their day-to-day legal issues. They will be a senior solicitor, who is also a specialist in the education sector. This approach ensures our clients receive prompt, high quality, practical and clear specialist advice.
Our Enhanced Service gives you access to advice from your senior solicitor who specialises in the education sector by phone, video call or email. It covers all routine enquiries provided that they can be dealt with in about an hour. For example, this could include reviewing straightforward documentation, advice on immediate problems, drafting letters and small agreements. A breakdown of some of the areas where we can help can be found below.
We encourage our clients to use us as a sounding board. We are here to advise on strategy and day-to-day legal matters.
Where a matter requires more extensive support, we will agree a separate scope of instructions at an additional charge. You will benefit from discounted hourly rates and all fee quotes are set out in a transparent manner and where possible at the beginning of a matter, so that you are clear as to the advice and assistance included and can budget effectively.
We will do our utmost to identify matters that could require additional support at the outset, but where this is not possible – for example if matters escalate or more support is needed than originally envisaged, we will discuss the options open to you so that you can plan and budget for the way forward.
Enhanced Service clients also benefit from discounted rates on our practical and engaging training sessions.
At Geldards we believe that any retainer works best when there is a well-founded and honest relationship between the provider and the client. To help build and maintain that relationship, your senior relationship manager will schedule an annual review meeting with you which can be held online or in person. We will also monitor usage to ensure that you are obtaining value for money.
Core Service
Again, as with the Enhanced service, our approach is to offer every Core Service client a dedicated relationship manager who will also act as their principal advisor, advising on most of their day-to-day legal issues. They will be a senior solicitor, who is also a specialist in the education sector. This approach ensures our clients receive prompt, high quality, practical, accessible and straightforward specialist advice.
Our Core Service option is for those that require less support, where it is envisaged that your educational institution will require quick occasional advice.
The service provides access to legal advice on the telephone to your occasional enquiries that can be dealt with on the telephone in about half an hour.
Where the number of enquiries received indicates that your legal need is significantly more than the usage anticipated by our retainer fee, we may speak to you about agreeing to a new package for your educational institution.
Typical support under our retainers
- Admissions & Enrolment – policy drafting, appeals, placement changes
- Student Conduct & Discipline – compliance with statutory and institutional policies, review processes
- Equality & SEND
- Complaints
- Crisis Management
- Data Protection & FOI
- Governance & Compliance
- Institutional Change
- Dispute Resolution & Litigation
- Contract Services
- Strategic HR planning and legal compliance
- Recruitment, retention & contractual matters
- Academic and non-academic staff terms & conditions
- Grievances, disciplinaries, TUPE, restructures, redundancy
- Trade union relations, collective bargaining
- Settlement agreements, sickness absence, holiday pay
- Employment tribunal claims
- Crisis management & reputational risk
Why choose our Education Legal Retainer Services?
- Fixed-fee certainty with transparent scope and clear pathways for any additional work
- Choice of complementary retainers tailored to the education sector
- A dedicated senior solicitor as your relationship manager for consistent, informed support
- Rapid access to advice by phone, video or email
- Discounted rates for extended projects and training
- An annual review to ensure value and alignment with your evolving priorities
You can select either our legal or employment & HR retainers, or combine them for complete, year-round legal coverage.
Why this matters for you
The education landscape is complex – whether you’re a school, trust, early education provider, further education college, a sixth form, or a university, the legal demands are rising. Safeguarding requirements, regulatory scrutiny, evolving employment practices, and data protection obligations are just a few issues on your operational plate.
Our education legal retainer service puts expert, accessible support within reach, helping you focus on delivering exceptional education without being bogged down by legal uncertainty.
Ready for a chat?
Explore how our education retainer services can give your institution the confidence and clarity it needs for smooth governance and operational resilience.
