CASE STUDY
A legal team of one generates big outcomes with Practical Law
Founded in 2014, Wellthy is a leading concierge caregiving support platform that offers families highly personalized support through every stage of their care journey. Its experienced team of health care professionals manages tasks for families and organizations of all sizes, supporting everyone through life’s most vital moments — including childcare, complex medical needs, senior care, and beyond.
Derek Russell-Kraft is the sole General Counsel at Wellthy. On top of vital responsibilities such as corporate financing and contracting with clients and vendors, he also shapes the company’s caregiving support strategy to ensure legal needs are handled efficiently and cost-effectively. We recently spoke with Russell-Kraft about his experience using Thomson Reuters Practical Law to clarify the complexities of his work for unprecedented time and cost savings.
One legal expert, countless legal challenges
As the only general counsel at Wellthy, Russell-Kraft must carefully navigate a complex web of legal directives. These regulations span areas like medical privacy, multijurisdictional tax rates, employment matters, and corporate financing. Before implementing Practical Law, this was far easier said than done. Contracts lacked consistent frameworks. Online resources quickly became outdated in the ever-shifting regulatory climate. Filling in any knowledge gaps with outside counsel was a drawn-out process, taking a lot out of a limited budget. Risk management was a minefield without full visibility of internal teams and third parties.
Russell-Kraft acknowledged that this inconsistent approach to work led to many unnecessary and expensive costs. Also, ensuring compliance in this state took excessive time and effort. In response to these issues, Practical Law was introduced across the business to connect and streamline legal operations, boosting confidence and reliability while saving valuable time and money.
Helping even the smallest legal teams generate big outcomes
Russell-Kraft — who had plenty of prior experience with Thomson Reuters — was confident this out-of-the-box solution would address the company’s legal challenges. He noted that a key benefit is its centralized data repository and solutions for small businesses. Practical Law is packed with automatically updated information and compliance tools, standardized and customizable legal templates, and risk mitigation capabilities such as due diligence and contract analysis.
These resources give Russell-Kraft exactly what he needs to simplify and accelerate his daily work. In particular, he pointed out how easy it became to draft contracts, brush up on employment and tax law across multiple states, and carry out screening checks during mergers and acquisitions (M&A) — all without external support.
Wellthy constantly uses Practical Law’s trusted content, cutting legal costs by 20 to 30% by replacing Russell-Kraft’s reliance on outside counsel with a holistic solution that streamlines and accelerates legal workflows. The business has redirected the return on investment Practical Law provides to support its care strategies, ensuring faster growth and better customer care.
Practical Law delivers faster, smarter compliant care by:
- Increasing efficiency with an intuitive, centralized solution that enables faster responses to legal challenges
- Reducing costs due to decreased reliance and spending on outside counsel
- Improving confidence with immediate access to expert-created, updated information and tools
- Lowering risk with enhanced due diligence capabilities and consistently correct legal resources
A legal lifeline for Wellthy’s vision of comprehensive care support
Practical Law has been a game changer for Russell-Kraft and the wider company. Its ability to provide specialized legal expertise and resources allows for significant time and cost savings while driving confidence when responding to the many daily legal and risk challenges Russell-Kraft navigates.
