Fixed-price products — Lodline, Sweden: creditors, boards, foreign investors — are pre-scoped engagements delivered for a stated fee and a stated deliverable, agreed before any work starts. They were built for three groups that keep running into the same problem with open hourly billing: creditors pursuing recovery, boards facing a defined governance decision, and foreign investors entering the Swedish market.
Who this concerns
A creditor with an unpaid claim against a Swedish counterparty needs a defined next step, not an open engagement that grows with every email exchanged. A styrelse (board) facing a single governance question, such as a director's liability exposure or a related-party transaction, needs an answer scoped to that question rather than a general retainer. A foreign investor entering the Swedish market, whether through an acquisition, a new subsidiary, or a first supply contract, needs the same certainty: what is covered, what it costs, and when it lands. Fixed-price products sit inside the broader work described on the practices overview; they are the entry point for readers who already know what decision they face and want a bounded way to get to it.
None of the three groups is buying advice in the abstract. Each is buying a defined deliverable: a recovery strategy, a board memorandum, an entry-structure assessment. That is the distinction between a fixed-price product and a standard engagement billed by the hour.
What the law says
Swedish law does not regulate how a firm prices its own work; fee structure is a matter of contract between the firm and the client. What it does regulate, under Swedish law as it currently stands, is the substance behind each product: the procedure a creditor must follow to enforce a claim, the duties a board owes when it takes a governance decision, and the screening a foreign acquirer may face before a transaction can close. A fixed-price product does not change any of that. It changes how the resulting work is scoped, billed and delivered, not the legal framework the work sits inside.
This matters for expectation-setting. A fixed fee covers a defined scope of legal work; it does not cover court fees, enforcement costs, or a change in the underlying claim once new facts appear. Where the underlying matter escalates, for instance a contested claim moving toward litigation, the fixed-price product ends and a separate engagement begins.
How it works in practice
What "fixed price" means at Lodline
A fixed-price product has three fixed elements: the deliverable, the fee, and the information the client must provide before work starts. It does not have a fixed number of hours behind it; how long the work takes internally is Lodline's risk, not the client's.
How the scope is set before the fee is fixed
Scope is set from a short intake: the claim amount and counterparty for a creditor product, the governance question and the board minute triggering it for a board product, the transaction structure and target sector for a foreign investor product. The fee is quoted against that scope, not against an estimate of hours.
What creditor products cover
A creditor product typically covers assessment of the claim, the enforcement route available against the counterparty, and a written recommendation on whether to pursue recovery, negotiate, or write the claim off. It does not cover the enforcement action itself once a route is chosen; that is a separate, subsequent engagement.
What board products cover
A board product answers one governance question at a time: a director's exposure on a specific decision, the adequacy of a related-party disclosure, the board's options on a shareholder dispute. It is written for board minutes, not a general compliance review of the company.
What foreign investor products cover
A foreign investor product typically covers an entry-structure assessment, a review of whether a transaction falls inside the scope of investment screening, and a first read of the target's key contracts. Screening questions specifically are covered in more depth on the investment screening overview; the fixed-price product is the entry point into that analysis, not a substitute for it.
What is excluded by design
Litigation once a claim is contested, negotiation once counterparties are at the table, and any work that depends on facts not known at intake are excluded from the fixed fee by design. Each of those is priced separately once the scope is known.
What to check before signing
- The deliverable is named, not described as "advice" or "support".
- The information the client must supply before the clock starts is listed.
- The point at which the fixed fee stops and hourly billing begins is stated.
- The jurisdiction and counterparty type assumed in the quote match the actual case.
- Any contract or transaction-specific product references the situation it is built for, such as the scenarios on the contracts and transactions overview.
FAQ
Does the fixed-price model apply to foreign direct investment screening filings?
A fixed-price product can cover the assessment of whether a transaction falls inside the screening regime and the preparation of a first filing position. It does not cover representation once the regulator opens a substantive review; that stage is scoped and priced separately, as set out on the investment screening page.
Can a fixed-price product cover a full contract dispute, or only part of it?
It covers the part that can be scoped at intake: reviewing the contract, assessing the position, and setting out the options. Once a dispute becomes contested and moves toward negotiation or litigation, the product ends and a separate engagement takes over, as described on the contracts and transactions overview.
How are the fees for fixed-price products determined?
The fee is set against the scope agreed at intake, not against estimated hours. The method, and how it differs from hourly billing, is set out on the fees page.
The numbers
Fixed-price products do not carry a published fee list, because the fee follows the scope, not a fixed catalogue price. What moves the fee within a single product line is the complexity of the facts at intake: the number of counterparties in a creditor claim, the number of jurisdictions in a foreign investor structure, the volume of contracts a board decision touches. A retail or e-commerce business with a large volume of standard-form supplier and platform agreements, for example, sits at a different scope than a business with a handful of bespoke contracts; the retail and e-commerce practice notes set out why that volume changes the review. What stays constant across every product is the structure: deliverable, fee, and the point at which the fixed scope ends.
Where it usually goes wrong
A fixed-price product breaks down where the scope assumed at intake turns out to be wrong. A creditor claim that looked uncontested becomes contested once the counterparty responds; a board question that looked isolated turns out to depend on a second, undisclosed decision; a foreign investor's structure changes after the screening assessment has already started, because a co-investor or a financing source is added late. In each case, the fixed fee covered the scope as understood at intake, not the scope that later emerged.
Cross-border cases carry an additional layer. Where the counterparty, the assets, or the parent company sit outside Sweden, the intake has to capture that from the start; a foreign investor product priced on the assumption of a purely domestic structure will not hold once a foreign parent or a foreign financing arrangement appears midway through the assessment. This is the single most common reason a fixed-price engagement has to be re-scoped after it has already started.
What to do next
A fixed-price product answers one bounded question. It does not replace the point at which a matter needs a full assessment of its prospects, for instance once a claim is contested, once a board decision has legal exposure attached to it, or once a screening filing is likely to be reviewed on the merits. That is where self-directed reading ends and a scoped assessment call starts; get in touch to scope one.