Terms of Engagement
This page covers two separate things. Part A is about using this website, and it applies to everyone. Part B explains how the Legal & HR Vault engagement works. Your signed Letter of Engagement states the terms that apply to your company.
Part A. Using This Website
Everything on this site is information and education. None of it is legal advice about your situation, because we do not know your situation.
Nothing you do on this website makes you our client. Not sending a form, not downloading a document, not using one of the calculators, not sending us a WhatsApp message. We say this plainly because people assume otherwise and the assumption can cost them a deadline.
We start acting for you only after two things have happened, in this order: we complete a conflict check and the verification checks we run before any engagement, and you sign a Letter of Engagement. Until both are done, you do not have a lawyer on this.
The free tools give general, indicative information based only on what you typed into them. They do not know your facts, your contract or your history, and they are not a substitute for advice.
Content is current at the date it was published. Employment law changes, and the Employment Act has been amended more than once in recent years. Check the date on anything you are about to rely on.
Part B. The Vault Engagement
What the Vault service supplies
The Vault is a fixed-scope legal service for Malaysian employers. Under a written engagement, the firm supplies the standard procedures, briefings and documents stated in your Letter of Engagement.
The engagement also covers one written question a week about those documents, by email, answered in two to three business days. Questions do not roll over. It is not an emergency line and there is no WhatsApp channel for it.
The written question runs for twelve months from the date access is issued and then stops. You keep the documents. Renewal is offered and is never automatic, and nothing is charged to you without you agreeing to it first.
Refunds. Once the documents have been delivered to you there is no refund. They are files, you keep a copy, and we cannot take them back. If you have paid and we have not yet started work on your file, tell us and we will return the fee. You do not need to give a reason.
For this purpose, work has started once access has been issued or the first written question has been answered, whichever happens first.
Two things are outside that allowance and are agreed separately. Completing or drafting a document for you is drafting, not a question. A live matter about a particular employee is a matter, not a question. We will tell you when a question has crossed either line, and we will put the scope and the fee in writing before we start.
The Letter of Engagement states the access period, named users, update position and limits. Do not rely on a website description to extend that written scope.
When the client relationship begins
Requesting the private fee schedule does not make you our client. The firm must first clear conflicts, complete the verification checks it runs before any engagement, and receive a signed Letter of Engagement. Access is not issued before that signed letter comes back.
Once those steps are complete, your company is our client for the Vault scope written in that letter. The Vault engagement is not an open-ended retainer and does not put the firm on record for every employee matter.
The documents are a starting point that you adapt
The standard full-time employment contract is one of the documents supplied. You fill in the particulars and adapt it to your own business. It is the full-time version and it is the only version. It is not drafted around your operation and it does not pretend to be.
A part-time, fixed-term, commission-based or executive contract is a different document and is drafted separately. So is a contract for a foreign worker or an expatriate. If your situation does not fit the template and you issue it anyway without advice, that is not something we can stand behind. We would rather say that in one honest sentence than bury it in a page of exclusions.
If you need a contract written around your actual operation, that is a separate piece of work with its own scope and its own fee, agreed in writing first.
Fact-specific work is agreed separately
The standard Vault material cannot assess disputed facts, approve a dismissal or tell you that a letter is safe to issue for a particular employee. If you ask us to apply the law to your facts, we agree that extra scope in writing.
The Letter of Engagement also states the payment, cancellation and access terms for the Vault service. Those terms govern the engagement.
What you may and may not do with the documents
The company and named users may use the materials internally as stated in the Letter of Engagement. Do not resell them, redistribute them, or pass them to another company. Access does not promise that the standard material covers every role, shift pattern or rule in the business.
Fees
Not published here. Malaysian law firms are not permitted to publish fees, so our fee schedule is sent privately by email to anyone who asks for it.