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The Cleritas Retainer
Ongoing medico-legal support on a monthly retainer: a friend who holds your hand, then tells you when to call your insurer. Coaching, document currency and a structured complaint first-response pathway, proactive and human, before anything becomes a claim.
The Gap We Fill
Indemnity matters, keep it, always. But policies are built to respond to claims, not to prevent them, and the experience of using one reflects that. They activate late, communicate by email, and engage on their timetable rather than yours.
The retainer is the other half of the arrangement. It works before anything is a claim: a complaint that might go nowhere, a consultation that felt wrong, a patient hinting at a solicitor, a form you're suddenly unsure about. You raise it early, with a human who knows your practice, and most problems die there. The ones that don't reach your insurer framed properly, documented properly, early.
We don't replace your insurer. We make you their best-prepared client.
"The worst time to learn how complaint response works is during your first complaint. The second-worst time is by email, in queue position, days later."WHY THE RETAINER EXISTS
Side by Side
| Your indemnity policy | The Cleritas Retainer | |
|---|---|---|
| When it engages | Once a claim or formal notification is live | The moment something feels wrong, long before any claim |
| How you reach it | Typically email and claim forms, on the insurer's timetable | A human who knows your practice, on a pathway you've rehearsed |
| What it does | Defends and pays out when things have already gone wrong, essential, and irreplaceable | Coaching, document currency and structured first response so fewer things get that far |
| Posture | Reactive by design | Proactive by design |
| What it is | An insurance product | Coaching and support. Not legal advice, not indemnity, not insurance |
When a Complaint Lands
The first 48 hours after a complaint decide most of what follows. Retainer clients never improvise them.
A guided form captures the facts while they are fresh: the treatment, the timeline, the communication so far, the records that exist. Twenty minutes of structure replaces a weekend of panic.
We review the intake against your records and documentation and produce a written summary: what happened, what the records show, where the strengths and exposures sit.
A clear plan for the first response, tone, content, what to commit to, what never to say, plus a coaching call before you send anything. A defensive, defensive-sounding reply escalates complaints; a structured, human one resolves most of them.
If the matter has claim potential, we say so plainly and early, so you notify on time with a complete, organised file. Insurers defend well-documented clients better. That is the whole point.
Membership
Your consent system is re-reviewed every year against current case law and guidance, so it never quietly goes stale.
£249 /month
£449 /month
POA multi-site
The Cleritas Retainer is a coaching, education and documentation support service. It is not legal advice, not indemnity cover, and not an insurance product of any kind. We are not solicitors and we are not regulated by the FCA or the SRA.
You must maintain appropriate professional indemnity at all times, it is a regulatory requirement, and nothing we do replaces it. Our role is to help you prevent problems, respond to complaints well, and get full value from your insurer when you need them: notifying on time, with organised records and a clear account. If a matter requires legal advice, we will tell you to seek it, and we will help you prepare for that conversation.
Common Questions
Judgement, structure and speed, from clinicians who work in medico-legal risk daily. Most practice problems are not legal problems yet: they are communication problems, documentation problems and panic problems. The retainer resolves those directly, and for the minority that do need a lawyer or an insurer, you arrive prepared instead of scrambling. In claims data, legal costs routinely reach 60–82% of smaller payouts. Preparation is the only lever you control.
Yes. New retainer clients without a prior Cleritas engagement start with a baseline document review, a light version of the audit, so we know what we are supporting. If gaps emerge, the annual review and coaching close most of them over the first year.
No, and be wary of anyone who offers to. Communications must come from you, and your policy will require your insurer to be dealt with directly. What we do is prepare you: the situation summary, the response plan, the coaching call before anything is sent, and a clear steer on when the insurer must be notified. You speak. We make sure you know what to say.
Because the model only works if we know our clients' practices properly, retainer places are capped per cohort. Waitlist members get first refusal and founding-member pricing. When a cohort fills, the next opens when capacity does.
See it for yourself
Two three-minute interactives: how one claim unfolds over three years and the expert witnesses who decide it, and how the standard your records are judged against has climbed since 1957.
Or read the plain-English case-law explainers: Bolam, Bolitho, Montgomery, McCulloch and more.
The Medicolegal Readiness Score
A five-minute diagnostic scored across the five pillars of defensibility, consent, records, consultation, complaints and regulation. Free, private, and uncomfortably precise.
Take the Readiness Score →
Founding Cohort
Retainer places are limited and released to the waitlist first. Join now for founding-member pricing, or start with a consent audit and see what the retainer would be protecting.