NGO Law – Nicole Copley

What we do

NGO Law provides practical legal advice and assistance to not-for-profits of all shapes and sizes. Our interesting and inspiring clients range from local community start-ups to trans-frontier projects and multinationals.

How we work

We provide a cost-effective, no-frills service that also aims to go the extra mile where it counts, and we aim for clarity and accuracy in all our dealings with you. We don’t have fancy offices or a smooth corporate image to maintain but focus on getting the job done as efficiently as possible. We work as a team and play to our strengths, which means you will probably deal with all of us at some stage.

Office hours and communication

• We all work flexi-time and (these days more often than not) remotely. One of us should be in the office between 8.30 am and 3.30 pm on week days.
• If you are not able to reach us on the landline, please email us or call our cellphone numbers. We will (unless we are in meetings or on other calls) answer our cellphones between 8.30am and 4 pm on week days.
• Email is our preferred method of written communication. We do not use Whatsapp or SMS for work purposes (except for CIPC pin confirmations).
• Because we prefer to deal with incoming emails in a comprehensive and considered fashion, we do not aim to answer all emails on the day they are received. If you do not receive a response within a week, please do feel free to resend and remind us about any pressing deadline you may have.
• Please try to give us at least three weeks’ notice of deadlines and meetings so that we can plan to have the work done when you need it. We do try to accommodate sudden emergencies, but this is not always possible when we are already working to other deadlines.

Dealing with government

The government departments that we deal with often have backlogs and turnaround problems. We keep abreast of these, so we can advise you on the sorts of delays you can expect.

We have long-standing collegial relationships with many of the officials working in government departments. The cordiality of these relationships is beneficial to all of our clients. We are mindful of the constraints and pressures that these people are under and will not pester, insult or harangue them as they deserve respectful treatment and it does your case no good to be demanding or rude.

New clients

Before we start work for you we will

• Usually provide some initial advice;
• send you a short ‘letter of engagement’ to sign; and
• Send you a pro forma invoice with a deposit to be paid (which will later be offset against the first invoice we send you).

Once we have the details we need from you, the signed letter of engagement and proof of payment of our deposit, we will open your file, set up meetings/ telephone consults (if necessary) and commence work.

Our fees

• We will provide estimates for the work to be done and fixed quotes for some sorts of work. Where we do provide the option of a fixed quote, you can still opt to be charged for actual time spent on your project.
• We charge for all of our time spent working for you. We do not take free meetings and, while we may give out some initial advice before you are officially a client, we will record the time spent doing this, and, once you are a client, invoice you for it, as this initial advice is probably the most valuable work we will do for you.
• We record our time spent on every sort of work done for you- researching, drafting, advising, meeting, travelling, emailing you, talking to you on the phone, filling out forms, checking and collating what you send, and following up with you when you don’t respond to us. (We don’t charge per email, or per page, or for minimum periods, just per minute).
• If you want us to stop work on a project, or to hit pause for a while, let us know, or we will keep working for you.