A block-hour retainer for organisations that already have a DPO function in place — but need senior cover for second-opinion review, escalation, regulatory horizon-scanning and the complex cases that arrive without warning. Your DPO stays the DPO. We are the senior bench they can call.
12-month retainer
Block hours, drawn on demand
Annual retainer fee
Quarterly hour-bank statement
Same working day for routine
Same-week SLA for substantive
The two engagements are often confused on first call — they sit at different points on the spectrum and the right answer depends on whether you have a DPO function or you need one.
Named on regulatory filings. Carries the role and the regulator-facing accountability. Monthly retainer with tiered intensity. For organisations without an in-house DPO function. See DPOaaS →
Your DPO stays the DPO. We are the senior backstop — second opinion, escalation cover, horizon-scanning, complex case input. Block-hour billing, drawn down as needed across the year. Never named externally.
The retainer is not a generic "ask us anything" pool. It is built around six well-defined uses where senior privacy depth is genuinely valuable — and where DPOaaS or a project engagement would be an over-commitment for the work involved.
Peer review of your DPO's substantive work — DPIAs, transfer assessments, privacy notices, breach decisions. A senior practitioner reads it cold and tells you honestly whether it would survive a regulator's review.
Quarterly briefing on what is changing in the regulators that matter to you — KSA PDPL guidance, India DPDP rules, UAE PDPL implementing regulations, GCC parallel developments. With "what it means for you" attached.
When your DPO faces a case outside their depth — unusual cross-border configuration, vendor refusing standard clauses, sensitive-category processing question — they pick up the phone. We work it through with them.
Expanding into a new market and want to know what privacy looks like there before you commit? Targeted quick-scan: what regulator, what filings, what the practical reality is, what the adjustment from your current program would be.
When privacy diligence questions arrive on a deal — yours or theirs — and the timeline is short. We field the questions, draft responses, validate the target's privacy posture, surface deal-affecting issues for the principals.
When the question is genuinely transfer-mechanism complex — chained processors, onward-transfer questions, novel corridors. The specialist counsel on our bench works it through and gives your DPO a defensible answer.
Pick a block at engagement-letter signing. The hours sit in your bank for the year and you draw down as you need them — by phone, email, scheduled call or written request. Quarterly statement shows hours used, hours remaining, and the shape of what's been drawn.
Effective: ~SAR 1,625 per hour drawn
Light-touch backstop for organisations whose DPO mostly handles things internally — but wants senior backup available for the four or five harder cases that come up across the year.
Effective: ~SAR 1,500 per hour drawn
The most common arrangement. Active senior bench available across the year — DPIA peer reviews on cadence, regular escalation cover, M&A diligence support when it arrives, jurisdiction quick-scans when expansion appears.
Effective: ~SAR 1,375 per hour drawn
For organisations with multi-jurisdiction exposure, active diligence cycles, or a privacy program in transition. Heavier draw-down expected, with named specialist counsel access included.
Hour-bank policy: 12-month annual cycle. Up to 25% of unused hours roll over to the next contract year. Top-up blocks (additional 20 / 40 / 80 hours) available mid-year at the same effective rate. Hours billed in 30-minute increments, minimum 30 minutes per item. Quarterly statement issued in writing.
How the hours typically get drawn down. Six anonymised patterns from current and recent retainer clients — sectors altered for confidentiality, but the hour shapes and engagement contours are accurate. Use them as a calibration reference.
Steady-state retainer. In-house DPO runs the program; we provide the quarterly regulatory briefing, peer-review three or four DPIAs, and field 6 — 8 substantive escalations across the year. No surprises, no surges.
Diligence-heavy year — incoming buy-side questions on three potential acquisitions, plus standing peer-review work on the in-house team's DPIA library. Block 02 absorbed both with hours to spare.
Heavy onboarding cycle of international clinical-research vendors triggered cross-border DTA review on 14 contracts. Bench specialist counsel handled the corridor work; in-house DPO retained sign-off.
Expansion into UAE and Saudi triggered jurisdiction-fit briefings and adjustment-plan work. Bench retained for ongoing minor-data input given UAE Child Digital Safety overlay. Heavy draw at expansion, lighter cadence after.
Strategic-acquisition year. Heavy diligence absorption on two cross-border acquisitions, plus standing horizon-scan and DPIA peer review. Block 03 sized for the activity, ended the year with 12 hours rolled forward.
Transition from interim PDPL guidance to formal implementing regulations triggered substantial advisory work — interpretation, gap-mapping, board readout. Specialist counsel hours dominated; routine items light.
Unlike DPOaaS — where one named DPO carries the role — the advisory retainer gives your DPO access to the firm's full senior bench. Each call goes to the practitioner with the right depth for the question. Same firm, same standards, deeper specialism per case.
Day-to-day regulatory liaison across SDAIA, UAE Data Office and India DPDP Board. Lead voice on interpretation questions and regulator-facing items.
Heads the DPIA / PIA / TIA bench. Owns the firm's risk-rating methodology. Goes-to for peer-review on high-risk processing assessments.
Engineering bench lead. Consent-management, DSR architecture, technical control questions. The right call for product- and platform-shaped privacy questions.
Runs the firm's fractional DPO bench. Operational privacy questions — DSR escalation, breach-decision support, vendor risk register.
Cross-jurisdiction transfer-mechanism specialist. Chained processors, novel corridors, SCC / addendum drafting. Block 03 retainers get named access.
Practice lead. Personally signs off on all multi-jurisdiction transfer assessments and material regulator-facing items that escalate from the retainer.
The advisory retainer is a deliberately narrow shape. It sits between full DPOaaS and ad-hoc engagement, and it is the right answer for a specific kind of privacy function — one that already exists internally and needs senior cover, not replacement.
You have a DPO running a working program. They are competent and trusted. They occasionally need senior backup — for the cases that are unusual, complex, or outside their direct experience.
Operating across two or more of KSA, UAE, India and EU — and your DPO cannot reasonably maintain regulator-facing fluency in all of them. We backstop the ones outside their primary specialism.
Active M&A or pre-IPO posture — diligence questions arrive on tight timelines, and your in-house team cannot absorb them at the same time as the day job. We absorb the diligence load.
You are operating in a regulatory environment that is itself changing — KSA PDPL implementing regulations, India DPDP rules, UAE PDPL guidance. Quarterly horizon-scanning earns its keep here.
If you do not have an in-house DPO, the advisory retainer is the wrong shape — there is no DPO to back up. You probably need DPOaaS instead, where we carry the role.
If the work is finite and deliverable-shaped — RoPA build, DPIA library, transfer mechanism build — that is a project engagement, not a retainer. Don't pay 12 months for a 12-week deliverable.
If the regulator-facing requirement is a named DPO contact in registrations, the retainer cannot satisfy it — the retainer practitioner is never named externally. DPOaaS is the right shape.
If a regulator inspection is active or a major breach has just occurred, the retainer is too thin. Speak to us about a project engagement specifically scoped for the response, or an interim DPO embed.
Boundaries are agreed in the engagement letter. The retainer is deliberately narrower than DPOaaS in several respects, and there are uses it is explicitly not built for. Here is what's outside the line.
The retainer practitioner is never named in your regulatory registrations, never appears on filings, and never carries the DPO role externally. If that is the requirement, DPOaaS is the right engagement.
Significant build work — full program implementation, multi-system DPIA library, complete transfer mechanism build — is contracted as a separate project engagement. The retainer hour bank is not designed to absorb a project.
If a regulator inspection becomes active during the retainer year, we can support — but leading the inspection response is a separate scoped engagement, not absorbed in the hour bank.
We provide privacy-domain advisory; we do not provide legal opinion as primary counsel. Where a question requires formal legal sign-off, your in-house or external lawyers retain that role.
Routine retainer SLA is same working day for routine queries, same week for substantive items. 24/7 critical-incident coverage is a DPOaaS feature, not a retainer feature. After-hours work for active incidents is billed in addition to the hour bank.
Hours can be drawn for targeted training input — methodology review, role-specific deep-dives. Mass training rollouts (annual all-hands, full curriculum delivery) are a separate scope.
Common questions about how the retainer actually runs in practice. If yours is not here, the intake form is the right place — a senior member of the practice will respond within one working day.
A senior member of the practice will respond within one working day with a proposed scoping call. Submissions go to a practitioner — never a sales desk.
Standing advisory retainer, DPOaaS, project engagement, Readiness Review — they all do different things. A 30-minute scoping call costs nothing, and we will tell you honestly which engagement shape — if any of them — is right for what you are trying to do.
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