For law firms
Quote for work you would never otherwise hear about.
Clearly scoped requests from buyers ready to instruct, on terms that respect how firms price.
- Your price stays yours. Quotes are sealed. You see your own quote and nobody else's, so no firm can see your price and undercut it.
- Conflict checks before you commit. Register interest and you receive the party names to run your check, on the usual professional terms, before you see the full brief or price a word of it.
- A level field. Every firm is checked against the SRA register, with a named contact on a matching domain. Buyers see who you are, not how big you are.
- Giving on the record. You choose your pledge, at least 0.5% of your fee. Each pledge you pay direct to the charity is recorded here and confirmed once the charity reports it received.
- Answer in your usual format. Upload the quote letter you would send anyway. We read it and fill in the form for you to check and confirm, so you should not need to retype a quote.
- Free during the pilot. After the pilot, firms pay a subscription to use the platform. We never take a share of your fees. Prices will be published before launch.
Who can join
Firms join by applying directly, or when a buyer invites them to quote. Either way, a firm must pass verification before it sees any brief. During the pilot, that means a firm regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA, the regulator of solicitors) in England and Wales, checked against the SRA register; a partner or director as named contact, on the firm's own email domain; professional indemnity insurance in place; and agreement to pledge at least 0.5% of its fee to legal charities, and to the pilot terms. The pledge is money the firm pays direct to a legal charity; Counsel Bids never takes it out of a fee.
Live rounds
Sometimes the buyer asks for a live round.
For well-defined work from a template on a fixed fee, a buyer may choose a live round instead of a sealed one. You quote in full first, as usual. Then, in a short scheduled window, you may lower your fee, and you see only your own rank. Everything else in your quote stays locked.
The rules are the same for every live round and are published before you register interest. Read the rules of a live round.
- Qualify first, with a complete quote. You send a complete quote in the standard format, sealed, by the qualifying deadline: fee, assumptions, exclusions, team, timing, an answer to every criterion and your pledge. Only firms that qualify join the window. If fewer than 3 do, there is no window and the round is decided as a sealed round.
- Your fee can only go down, in steps you confirm. Each change is at least £50 or 1% of your current fee, whichever is greater, and you confirm every change you make yourself, because a fee cannot be raised again. Your pledge may go up, never down. Scope, assumptions, exclusions and team are locked, so a lower fee never means less work.
- You see your rank, nothing else. The countdown, your current fee, how many changes you have made, and your position, such as “2nd of 4”. Never another firm's fee, name, the gap to the leader or another firm's changes. The buyer sees the lowest fee and the number of changes during the window, with no firm's name attached, and compares the final quotes on value when it closes.
- A calm screen, and a sealed lowest fee if you want one. The window is 30 minutes as standard, with a five-minute extension after any late change, adding at most thirty extra minutes in all. You can set a sealed floor before it opens: the platform then steps your fee down whenever you are not ranked first, and never goes below your floor. If you cannot use the screen, staff enter the change for you.
- Practise before your first one. Once your firm is signed in you can run a practice live round against three fictional firms, on the real screen, with nothing recorded.
Quote in the pilot. It is free.
Join a small group of SRA-regulated firms shaping Counsel Bids before launch. Verification needs your SRA number and a named partner or director.