Our Model

The mSME Garage is in all things careful to avoid the notion of one size fits all when it comes to how it approaches its respective industries. This is largely because it had a considerable time of understanding the diversity of the business world that can neither be interpreted nor be addressed as a homogeneous industry. Each business has a distinctive fingerprint of identity influenced by the individuals that started it, their backgrounds(education, social), the locality of their operations and the overall vision held by the respective persons. It is fundamental that all these are taken into account when deciding how exactly to cater to the needs of the business. 

Having appreciated this, firstly, the Garage takes into account the fact that most of the businesses in this sector are still prone to a lot of financial volatility as they are still relatively small players. This means that charging exorbitant prices for legal services is bound to force them to forego legal services altogether if they cannot do things on their own. Being sensitive to this, the Garage benchmarks other players in its market and ensures that it tags the lowest prices to respective services. It is a non-profit organisation that is comfortable with making just enough money to ensure the continuity of its operations (paying salaries of staff, utilities and other costs incidental) and whatever outstanding profits that are left are allotted to BarefootLaw which provides free legal information. It is also able to achieve economies of scale by taking on a contingent of clienteles who individually may not be paying much but when considered on a large scale, ensure that the Garage always runs with a positive bank balance. Our partners as well play a big part in our ability to subsidise the services we offer, seeing that in many cases they finance our services on behalf of some of our clientele, who, despite the urgent need of our services, are not disposed to afford these services in the interim. 

Secondly, the Garage recognises the perception that most people in the business world hold of lawyers, which perceptions add up to an image of an unapproachable people. We do this by intentionally associating with these businesses in the many convergence points that bring them together, such as creating memoranda of understanding with a plethora of business hubs around the country and attending to these communities severally, while mixing up both individual approaches as well as group meetings. This access gives them an opportunity to paint a more cordial image of who lawyers are and gives room to start conversations that yield legal guidance and services to the benefit of their businesses. 

Last but not least, the fact that we are a not-for-profit organisation with a Board creates a system of accountability that demands trustworthy relationships with everyone that makes acquaintance with us.