We hear from our Outside General Counsel clients all the time, “I was tired of paying hundreds of dollars an hour, rounded to the nearest tenth of an hour, to ask a simple question.”
These clients have already gone the route of retaining law firms. Often, the arrangement with an outside law firm includes a senior attorney as a project manager who delegates tasks to junior attorneys and paralegals. Consequently, paperwork and documents change hands several times over.
These same clients are either unable or unwilling to hire in-house counsel, which will cost them upwards of $300,000 and beyond in salary alone. Also, don’t forget to add the costs of benefits, payroll taxes, etc. One of the primary functions of inside counsel is to know which firm to call for a specific issue… now you’re paying hundreds of thousands per year for in-house counsel and maybe more for outside assistance in specialized matters.
Do You Want Efficient Counsel?
I’m going to let you in on a little secret, one which has impacted my popularity with colleagues and law school classmates alike. It often doesn’t take that long to review a contract or draft a boilerplate NDA – most tasks such as these take less than an hour for a seasoned business attorney. It also shouldn’t take a week to get a response—your counsel needs to move at the speed of business.
At Outside General Counsel, our fractional general counsel model is the solution to the inefficient billable hour model. You will be assigned a senior attorney with relevant experience in your industry. Accordingly, this attorney will serve as your single point of contact, allowing him or her to become intimately familiar with your business. Likewise, our lawyers will learn your people, SOPs, principles, strengths, and weaknesses. Outside General Counsel can typically handle up to 90% of your needs. Our commitment is to provide better service and legal outcomes, and our pricing model invariably results in savings versus using a traditional law firm or a full-time attorney. For a flat monthly fee, your attorney will avail him or herself 24/7 to your senior management team, who can call with a simple inquiry without getting billed a .1 hour time.
Where We Can Help
On our website, you will find this handy chart to demonstrate all of the matters our attorneys can handle for you.
- Commercial matters including mergers and acquisitions; strategic partnership agreements; sales and service agreements; lease agreements; and more.
- Intellectual property services include filing for patents, trademarks, and copyrights; and managing trade secrets, including drafting NDAs, as well as reviewing cases where an NDA may have been violated.
- Human resource issues, including employment/labor contracts and disputes; compensation and benefits matters; and immigration matters such as H-1B visas.
- Product and supply chain matters, such as purchasing, manufacturing, licensing, and shipping and logistics.
- Compliance and regulatory processes, such as ethics and compliance training; regulatory matters; environmental issues; health and safety matters; and document retention and control.
- Corporate and governance matters, such as Board of Directors support; supporting finance/treasury departments; internal authority and controls; and entity maintenance.
- Dispute management, such as commercial disputes, product liability, regulatory disputes, and warranties.
Sound interesting? Contact us today to schedule your intake and experience the Outside General Counsel Difference.