Outside General Counsel – Legal Counsel for Your Business

Good legal advice and counsel are “value added” to any small, medium, and large business. Counsel can manage risk and spot and eliminate problems BEFORE they occur, conserving corporate resources for more productive use. For example, your Counsel can help:

• Avoid and manage employee disputes
• Craft compensation plans
• Draft employee handbooks and company policies
• Handle corporate governance problems concerning shareholders, Directors and officers
• Prepare contracts
• Protect intellectual property
• Advise on corporate structure, and
• Eenhance profits by avoiding costs incurred by errantly “going it alone.”

But, not every business can afford a full time General Counsel.  That dilemma can be solved by recruiting Outside General Counsel – a private attorney or Firm with skill and experience in a variety of corporate legal matters.

Outside General Counsel is just that – general – similar to a general practitioner physician.  Outside Counsel can represent the business in ways such as:

• Corporate legal matters and disputes
• Handle day-to-day legal matters related to contracts and non-disclosure agreements
• HR issues
• Leasing and the like.

Outside Counsel can also help solve more complex legal matters personally, through his or her law firm, or outsourcing and managing the problem through an attorney that focuses on the issue. In this way, Outside Counsel will “talk the talk” with the specialized attorney, assist the client in making legal decisions, lead a “due diligence team” when considering a merger or acquisition, manage litigation, and prevent the client’s legal budget from spinning out of control.  Outside Counsel is often the first stop when leadership is faced with legal matters. Already being “on the team” as a long-term member, Outside Counsel has great incentive to solve problems efficiently.

Likewise, larger Companies with In-House General Counsel often rely on one or more Outside Counsel attorneys and their law firms to handle specific legal areas on a regular basis.  For example, if a law firm focuses significant time on employment matters (like we do at Cook Craig & Francuzenko, PLLC), Inside General Counsel for large companies with regular employment-related matters (not always disputes) will often enter into long term engagements with such firms, knowing and developing a great comfort level.  Over time, Outside Counsel serves as an “on call” extension of Inside Counsel’s team.

The benefits of engaging Outside General Counsel includes:

• Negotiated legal cost containment and budget consistency
• Trusted long-term perspective (and knowledge of your business) balanced by an external viewpoint
• Responsiveness
• An invested “partner” committed to the Company’s growth and prosperity (not just a one-hit wonder).

How does a small or mid-sized business secure corporate counsel?

One option – after conducting a thorough interview process with several attorneys and law firms – is to retain one or more individual attorneys to focus on the business’s legal matters. These attorneys may be independent contractors or more likely employees; thus, an Inside General Counsel model.

For a variety of mostly budget-based reasons, small and mid-sized businesses will often opt to retain a law firm with diverse practice areas to serve as Outside General Counsel. The business and firm will then appoint a single identified “lead” attorney as the regular point of contact.

If your business is interested in pursuing an Outside General Counsel relationship, please contact us at Cook Craig & Francuzenko, PLLC.