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Can you believe it? I can't.

decoded.legal first opened its (virtual) doors to clients five years ago today!

Doing what we do, well ...

We set out with simple objective:

to run a tech-savvy virtual English law firm, helping Internet, telecoms, and technology businesses achieve their commercial goals, and navigate often complex regulatory environments, at a reasonable, predictable price.

Five years in, I'm confident we've delivered on that mission. We've had happy client after happy client, and we've shared their feedback across our website.

I'm also confident that it remains the right approach for us for the next few years, and possibly longer. There's clearly a market for delivering the kind of specialist areas more usually found in large, expensive, law firms, in our a practical, plain English, style, and we're well placed to continue to deliver to it.

... and not doing what we can't do

We're insistent that we'll only do what we know we can do well. Really well.

We're keen to innovate, and to learn new things, so we continue to expand what we can offer, but we've always avoided — and will continue to avoid — agreeing to do things just because someone's willing to pay for them.

We want our clients to get the best possible advice, and, if we can't offer that, then we'll continue to defer to people who can (if we know who they are; we won't recommend someone we don't know!).

Thank you to all our wonderful clients

We've had the pleasure of working with some amazing clients over the last five years.

And, while we're always delighted to welcome new clients, we're even happier when existing clients come back to us over and over again. We must be doing something right.

In particular, thank you to those of you who joined us at the very beginning, and have let us work alongside you since.

We hope to work with you for many more years to come.

A particularly special thank you

decoded.legal is a family business, jointly run by Sandra and me.

We came up with the idea of running our own business while out for a walk one evening, we did the paperwork together, we tackle the challenges we face together, and we've managed to work from home, basically spending 24/7 together, for the last five years, with hardly a cross word.

Since I tend to write our blogposts, I get to abuse that privilege today, and say an especial thank you to Sandra: without you, we wouldn't be where we are today and, more importantly, I wouldn't be as happy as I am today. Thank you! (And don't forget our VAT submission is due soon ;).)