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Vision – spending time with founders and business owners gave Helen Lyne the idea for Pneuma Legal.
A new day for legal advice
Why Pneuma Legal is taking a different approach to legal support for Teesside businesses and beyond
PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
Some of the best ideas start with conversations between like-minded people who are open to learning from each other.
For Helen Lyne, the idea behind Pneuma Legal emerged through time spent alongside founders and business owners, listening to how decisions are made and how legal advice actually lands in practice.
While working regularly in co-working space Flok in Middlesbrough last year, Helen found herself immersed in the dayto-day realities of running a business.
This wasn’ t just in theory, but in real time – conversations about growth, pressure, people and cash flow, all decisions that could not wait.
She also recognised a language barrier, not in the sense of intelligence or capability, but in how problems, risk and decisions are discussed, and it was this that opened her mind to a world of possibility.
“ It taught me more about business than I’ d learned anywhere else,” she says.“ There is no better way to understand how legal advice needs to work than being close to the decisions it’ s meant to support, and it’ s not often that an opportunity comes along.
“ Legal advice is traditionally delivered in technical, cautious terms, shaped by regulation and precedent. Businesses, by contrast, operate in real time, which can often be imperfect.
“ What we are doing here doesn’ t throw caution to standards or regulation. It’ s about understanding context, priorities and the bigger picture, and framing risk in a way that supports decision making, rather than slowing it down.”
A dispute-resolution lawyer by background, Helen has spent much of her career helping businesses when things go wrong – or ideally, before they go wrong – embracing a modern, preventative approach to litigation by navigating risk and avoiding fallout early on.
But that proximity to businesses highlighted a recurring gap. Legal advice was often technically sound but disconnected from commercial reality.
The result? Pneuma Legal – a new venture that aims to close the disconnect between the legal and business worlds by fusing the two together.
It pairs the accountability, judgement and pragmatism found in a well-run business with properly regulated legal advice that
38 | Tees Business