This article and the one following are derived from a joint talk given at the BIALL Annual Conference 2017, held in Manchester. The title of the conference was ‘Together or apart? Effective ways of working’ and this talk described the collaboration between Shell's Legal Librarian, Hilary Smith, and Miriam Davies, Head of Library & Information at Norton Rose Fulbright, to provide an enquiry service to Shell's legal community. The service subsequently developed to include other law firms on Shell's legal panel. Topics covered include understanding the information needs of in-house lawyers, types of queries received, why involve law firms in providing such a service, the concept of added value and its importance in the client-law firm relationship, the setting up of the service, how it works in practice, how it is being used and key take away messages. In this article Hilary Smith takes a view from the client perspective.