Outside General Counsel
Senior legal counsel on call — for the day-to-day decisions and the bet-the-company moments.
When to hire outside general counsel
Most growing companies hit a window where occasional-project lawyering stops working. Contracts are piling up. The board wants cleaner materials. Someone needs to think ahead of the next financing. But hiring a full-time general counsel is premature — the cost is real and the work isn’t yet full-time.
Outside general counsel fills that gap. We function as the senior legal resource for the company — not just drafting specific documents, but maintaining ongoing awareness of the business, anticipating issues, and being available for the quick calls that don’t merit a formal engagement.
Scope
A typical outside-GC engagement includes:
- Day-to-day commercial contracts — vendor, customer, partnership, distribution, licensing, employment
- Corporate governance — board minutes and resolutions, annual consents, cap table maintenance, option grants
- Employment matters — offer letters, proprietary information and inventions assignment agreements, contractor agreements, separations
- Financing preparation and execution — running data rooms, coordinating diligence, negotiating term sheets and definitive documents
- Strategic transactions — M&A, joint ventures, strategic partnerships
- Escalation to specialists — when a matter benefits from specialized counsel (litigation, tax, IP prosecution, regulatory), we coordinate and manage those engagements rather than force-fit the work
Engagement structure
Outside-GC engagements run on flat monthly retainers sized to expected volume, hourly-with-a-cap structures, or hybrid arrangements — whichever fits the pattern of the work. We calibrate after the first sixty days based on actual utilization.
The goal is predictable, budgeted legal spend and a single point of accountability, not a surprise invoice at the end of the month.
Representative matter
Day-to-day outside general counsel for an LA-based fashion brand through national expansion — commercial contracts, vendor and supply-chain agreements, employment matters, IP protection, and ongoing board support.
Frequently asked.
What stages of companies typically engage an outside GC?
Most of our outside-GC clients are post-product-market-fit, revenue-generating companies — seed to Series B stage venture-backed, or bootstrapped businesses in a similar size range. At that stage there’s enough ongoing legal volume to justify a dedicated resource, but not enough for a full-time in-house hire. Companies closer to exit sometimes keep us engaged alongside in-house counsel for specific workstreams.
How is outside GC different from hiring a full-time general counsel?
A full-time GC is embedded in the business every day and takes on a meaningful set of non-legal operational responsibilities. Outside GC is a senior advisor relationship — we’re available for the work but not sitting in every meeting. For most companies below ~$20M in revenue, outside GC delivers the substantive legal coverage of a GC for a fraction of the loaded cost, with the flexibility to transition to an in-house hire when the business outgrows the arrangement.
Can you handle employment and HR matters?
Day-to-day employment work — offer letters, IP assignments, contractor agreements, PTO and expense policies, separations — yes. Sensitive employee-relations matters, active internal investigations, or employment litigation call for employment-specialist counsel, and we’ll coordinate that rather than handle it ourselves.
What’s a typical engagement structure?
Most engagements start with a short scoping exercise — reviewing your existing contracts, corporate records, and anticipated workload — and then we propose a retainer sized to the expected volume. After the first sixty days we recalibrate. You can cancel or adjust the engagement at any time; it isn’t a long-term contract.
Ready to talk?
Tell us a bit about what you’re working on. We’ll come back within one business day with a clear sense of fit, scope, and budget.
Start a conversation