Why Template Documents Are the Smartest Investment for SMEs
Banks have been internalising their documents for years to cut costs and speed up deals. Here is why SMEs should do the same—and how independent consultants make it affordable
“We’re thinking of streamlining our processes, are you free for a chat to discuss the project?”
Ten years ago, when I heard that sentence from a client, I knew what was coming. A massive documentation project. Months of work. A five‑figure invoice. And then – silence. Once the templates were built, the recurring work dried up.
For law firms, it was a necessary evil. For clients? It was a revolution.
This shift has continued to accelerate with banks and other financial institutions. The smartest operators are building internal document libraries, master legal opinions, and standardised transaction packs. They’re cutting external legal costs by 40–60%, shrinking deal timelines from weeks to days, and reducing operational risk in the process.
But here’s the thing: why can’t this also apply to SMEs? Is it because they think it’s only for the big players, the big companies, the big banks? I am going to go out on a limb here and say they are wrong.
What Does “Internalising Documents” Actually Mean?
When a bank or finance company decides to internalise its documents, it’s committing to a structured project with three core components:
Standard‑form documents
Security agreements, loan facilities, guarantees, share charges, corporate approvals – whatever the business uses repeatedly gets drafted once to a high standard, then locked down. (I've written before about common mistakes in BVI director changes—the kind of errors that template documents and checklists eliminate.)
Master legal opinions
This is the bit that really matters for credit and legal teams. They need clear, jurisdiction‑specific comfort that their loans, security, guarantees and structures work as intended.
Instead of commissioning a fresh legal opinion for every deal across multiple jurisdictions (BVI, Cayman, Jersey, Bermuda, and others), you instruct law firms to produce master opinions that cover 80–90% of scenarios. You go back to them only for bespoke situations or updates.
Manuals and checklists
In‑house teams and operations staff need to know when they can use the templates safely and when they must escalate. A good manual and checklist turns templates from static to living documents.
The upfront investment is significant. Depending on jurisdiction and complexity, you’re looking at a serious five‑ or six‑figure spend for a bank‑grade project. But the ROI is immediate and recurring.
A Clear Line: Opinions vs Consulting
It’s important to be honest about roles here.
- Formal legal opinions must come from qualified law firms or lawyers admitted in the relevant jurisdiction.
- Independent consultants should not, and do not, try to replace that.
In practice, the most efficient model is collaborative:
- A consultant helps design the document architecture, standard forms, checklists, and escalation procedures.
- Law firms are brought in strategically to draft and sign off the master legal opinions, and to bless the final form documents from an enforceability perspective.
- The business ends up with a joined‑up system: opinions that credit and risk teams trust, and documents and processes that operations and legal can actually use at scale.
From my experience, credit and legal teams at banks pay particular attention to the master opinions – that is what underpins their willingness to rely on the templates in the first place.
Why This Works: The Three Big Wins
1. Cost control
External counsel will charge for each transaction. Every transaction, no matter how routine, generates fees. A standard security agreement might cost thousands to draft and negotiate each time. Multiply that across a year and you’re spending serious money on documents that are mostly identical.
Templates and master opinions flip that model. You pay once for the heavy lifting, then use them repeatedly. Legal spend on “repeat work” drops sharply and stays low.
2. Speed and efficiency
Deal teams hate waiting for legal sign‑off. A bespoke document might take two weeks to draft, review and approve. A pre‑approved template backed by a master opinion? This has already been blessed.
In competitive financing or lending, that speed often decides who wins the mandate.
3. Risk mitigation
Every time someone redrafts a document from scratch, they introduce variation. Variation creates risk – missed clauses, inconsistent definitions, enforceability gaps that only surface when things go wrong. Each variation needs fresh credit and legal sign-off, slowing everything down.
Templates backed by master opinions eliminate most of that risk. Compliance teams like them because there’s no deviation from the approved form. Internal audit likes them because version control is simple. Legal teams like them because they spend less time firefighting and more time on strategic work.
The SME Blind Spot
Here’s what most people miss: SMEs need this even more than banks do.
A small corporate services provider, fintech lender, or fund administrator faces identical documentation problems – inconsistent drafting, rising legal costs, deals that stall because every document needs external review – but they don’t have the budget for a big‑ticket law firm project.
An SME might be spending a chunky annual amount on piecemeal legal work: a charge here, an opinion there, ad hoc advice on enforcement. It’s expensive, it’s slow, and it doesn’t scale.
For a fraction of that annual spend, they could:
- Build a realistic template library for their core products
- Commission targeted master opinions from law firms in the key jurisdictions
- Use an independent consultant to join it all up into a usable process
Most just don’t realise that’s an option.
The Independent Consultant Advantage
This is where independent consultants with deep practice experience have a structural edge.
No corporate overhead. No billable hour targets. No associate leverage model. Just direct access to someone who has spent 20 years drafting these documents across multiple jurisdictions and knows what works, what breaks, and what regulators will flag.
I’ve worked on secured lending, premium insurance financing, and offshore structures in Bermuda, the BVI, Cayman, and Jersey for two decades. I’ve seen the same drafting mistakes repeated across dozens of deals. I know which clauses cause problems at enforcement and which ones are just “nice to have”.
But technical expertise alone isn't enough. Lawyers need to think like business managers—understanding ROI, operational efficiency, and how legal work plugs into broader business goals. That mindset is what makes template projects succeed or fail.
That expertise doesn’t replace law firms. It makes their input more targeted, more efficient, and more affordable – especially for SMEs.
What To Ask Before You Start
If you’re thinking about building templates or standardising your documents, here’s where to start:
Step 1: Track your repeat spend. Pull six months of invoices and identify the documents that appear again and again. If you’re spending more than £15k–£20k a year on the same security agreements, charges, or corporate resolutions, you have a business case.
Step 2: Find your bottlenecks. Is legal turnaround slowing deals? Are operations teams waiting days for sign-off on routine transactions?
Step 3: Map your jurisdictions. Which ones genuinely need bespoke opinions every time, and which could be covered by a master opinion that’s updated annually?
If you’re spending serious money on repeat legal work and you don’t have a template strategy yet, let’s talk. I’m happy to walk through a practical framework for your business—what works, what doesn’t, and how to balance consultants and law firms in the process.
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