Business Legal Services
Managed Service Agreements
Managed service agreements drafted to reflect your service model, support deals and limit your businesses liability
Whether you need standard managed service terms for your customer base or support for a major customer contract negotiation, we help you put clear, workable agreements in place around service delivery, performance, payment and exit.
Finding the right legal partner
Why work with Harper James
Choose a legal partner you can trust: we’ll help protect your goals, your business and your people so you can move forward with confidence and focus on growing your business.
Affordable, transparent and predictable pricing
Clear itemised invoices, subscription plans with up to 50% discount, and fixed fee products help you plan and manage legal spend – with no nasty surprises.
Proven track record and measurable results
We’ve supported over 8,000 businesses since 2014, with an ‘Excellent’ rating on Trustpilot and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 60+ from monthly client surveys.
Straight-talking, responsive advice
That means fast response times, practical expert legal advice delivered in plain English, and dedicated client service and account management support.
Risk and compliance assured
We’re an SRA regulated firm, but more importantly, we build quality, data, and compliance best practice into everything we do.
Managed service agreements
Practical legal advice for managed service providers
A managed service agreement needs to do more than get through procurement. It should give your customer confidence while making sure your obligations reflect how your services are actually sold, managed and delivered. Here are some examples of how we can help:
When you need to put a managed services agreement in place for a new customer, so the scope, responsibilities and commercial terms are clear from the outset.
When you are negotiating an enterprise customer’s contract and need to protect your margin and delivery model without unnecessarily slowing the deal down.
When you need to agree service levels and service credits so performance expectations, measurement and remedies are commercially workable.
When you need to manage liability and contractual risk around outages, security incidents, customer dependencies or failures elsewhere in the supply chain.
When your services involve customer data, software or third party technology and you need the contract to address responsibilities, access rights and intellectual property clearly.
When you are changing or renewing an existing MSP arrangement and need the contract to accommodate new services, pricing, subcontractors or a more complex customer relationship.
We keep the process straightforward and focused on what will move the agreement forward. You will know what we need from you, where the key issues sit and what happens next.
- Share any existing agreement, customer paper, proposal, service description or SLA, together with the commercial context and how the service is delivered.
- We will review the agreement and explain where scope, service levels, payment, responsibilities, liability or other terms may need attention.
- We can draft, review or negotiate the agreement, keeping the legal position aligned with your commercial priorities and operational model.
Why choose our managed service agreement lawyers?
Meet our team
Our commercial and technology specialists advise managed service providers on the contracts that underpin customer relationships.
That means understanding how service descriptions, SLAs, customer dependencies, recurring charges, liability and exit provisions work together. We focus on making sure the agreement is not only legally robust, but practical for the people selling, managing and delivering the service.
If you have an in-house legal team, we can plug in where you need us most. Whether that’s extra resource during a busy period, support on a high value customer negotiation, or an external view on a difficult point, we work in a way that complements your team rather than adding another layer. You stay in control, with clear, concise input that’s easy to take back to commercial stakeholders and the board.
Find out more about the team that will be working with you:
Understanding Managed Service Agreements
Common questions
Managed service agreements (MSAs) are widely used in commercial relationships. Here are some of the main legal and commercial issues an MSA should deal with.
How should service levels and service credits be structured in a managed service agreement?
Service levels should reflect what the MSP can realistically control and measure. The agreement should also deal with exclusions, dependencies and how performance is calculated.
If service credits apply, the contract should be clear on when they are triggered, how they are calculated and whether they affect any other remedies available to the customer.
What customer dependencies should be addressed in a managed service agreement?
Managed services often depend on the customer providing access, information, systems, personnel or approvals.
The agreement should make those responsibilities clear and explain what happens where the MSP cannot meet an obligation because the customer has not done something it was required to do.
How should liability be allocated where services rely on third party technology or infrastructure?
Where a managed service provider depends on third party software, hosting, connectivity or other infrastructure, the contract should reflect where responsibility actually sits.
It is important to avoid accepting liability for failures that are outside the managed service providers reasonable control, particularly where the managed service provider cannot recover the same losses from the underlying supplier.
How should a managed service agreement deal with changes to services, scope or pricing?
The agreement should include a clear change control process so that new services, additional work or changes in customer requirements can be documented properly.
This helps avoid uncertainty over what is included in the recurring fee and gives both parties a structured way to agree changes to scope, charges and responsibilities.
What should an MSP consider when agreeing termination and exit assistance provisions?
Termination provisions should deal with when the agreement can end and what each party needs to do afterwards.
For business critical services, exit assistance may also need to cover handover, data return or migration, continued access and cooperation with a replacement provider. These obligations should be clear and proportionate to the service being provided.
Testimonials
What our clients say
Our clients value straight answers, commercial judgement and lawyers who keep momentum in high stakes transactions.
Harper James delivers exactly what I want from my lawyers; someone who presents not only the risks and the legal argument but who also understands the commercial side. Take our recent work with Sarah Gunton for example; if we decide we’re going to take on a commercial risk, she’ll adapt the terms for us to do that while reducing the risk as much as possible. The service we get there is like gold dust for us.
Craig Aston
COO,
Celerity Limited
We often need legal advice quickly, especially during sales with new customers, and Rob is very responsive and always available for meetings. When I was looking for a law firm, I wanted that full range of services, as I knew we’d need advice outside of the tech remit. The flexibility has been really positive.
Ivan Harding
CEO and Co-Founder,
Applaud
Harper James delivers exactly what I want from my lawyers; someone who presents not only the risks and the legal argument but who also understands the commercial side. Take our recent work with Sarah Gunton for example; if we decide we’re going to take on a commercial risk, she’ll adapt the terms for us to do that while reducing the risk as much as possible. The service we get there is like gold dust for us.
Craig Aston
COO,
Celerity Limited
We often need legal advice quickly, especially during sales with new customers, and Rob is very responsive and always available for meetings. When I was looking for a law firm, I wanted that full range of services, as I knew we’d need advice outside of the tech remit. The flexibility has been really positive.
Ivan Harding
CEO and Co-Founder,
Applaud
