Why You Need Outside General Counsel

We want to begin 2020 explaining some of what our firm does.

Let’s say you have a small business that just keeps growing. You made all the right moves. Nothing seems to go wrong. Unfortunately, things can, and often do go wrong at some point.

The following are hypotheticals, heavily modified (to avoid confidentiality concerns), yet adapted from real events:

• Your biggest client just failed to pay its most recent invoice. You realize that you banked a lot on the client but never had anything formal in writing. You needed airtight contracts backed by collateral or at least a personal guarantee and/or a confession of judgment, but now you need someone to help you with commercial collection, including by either an attorney’s strongly worded demand letter or, if necessary, through the courts.
• One of your employees wasn’t so happy when their co-worker sexually harassed them and was sending them inappropriate text messages.  You needed someone to create an employee manual or provide training and implement workplace policies to be compliant with the law, but now you need an investigation of the claim and a mitigation plan which includes releases and hopefully avoid litigation.

Both are extremes – but, unfortunately, we have been involved in similar fights on behalf of our clients.  In either of these situations, the business needs an attorney.

As every business grows, more issues arise.  The bigger you get, the more of a target you become.You need an attorney that you trust to handle these issues cohesively. So, what do you do? Rely on your outside general counsel.

In-line with the above examples, here is some more of what we, at Lurie|Strupinsky, regularly do for our corporate clients:

1. Draft formation and operational documents for the business as necessary
2. Draft and negotiate contracts, leases and other documents necessary to continue the business operations
3. Provide advice with respect to employment matters, including the measuring of risk
4. File and defend copyrights and trademarks and utilize litigation, if necessary, to protect other intellectual property
5. When the need comes to utilize the intervention of the Courts, either by directly filing or defending cases or, when necessary, working with outside, specialized counsel on specific issues and manage the litigation

Larger corporations have the capital to hire full-time general counsel – or several of them. You need the hands-on approach and personal relationship of a lawyer who is like being your full-time general counsel but providing services for a couple of hours a week, or as needed.  That is where the value of the outside general counsel comes in.  If this is something your business can use, or you know someone who can benefit form our services, please reach out to us right away!