Outside General Counsel Services
This article discusses and describes Outside General Counsel Services. Ever wish you had a lawyer to run your business ideas, issues and problems by? Do you think it would be too expensive to hire one? Well, it usually is expensive to hire a seasoned, high quality attorney full time to work for a company. But, what if you could have the best of both worlds? Have an experienced, qualified and seasoned attorney at your disposal without the costs of hiring one full time (plus benefits, car allowances, perks, vacation time, etc.). Well, now you can.
Brown & Charbonneau, LLP provides the “Your General Counsel” program to its business clients. You can have highly rated, award winning attorneys help guide you and your business through the myriad of legal issues facing California businesses at a fraction of the cost for a experienced and highly qualified lawyer full time.
How do we do it? We provide our team of business attorneys, paralegals and legal assistants to you on a monthly retainer basis. The costs to you are a fraction of the regular hourly rates and no where near the costs of a full time, partner level business attorney. We have three packages: Level 1 General Counsel, Level 2 General Counsel and Level 3 General Counsel. The monthly rates typically range from as low as $1500 per month to $10,000 per month depending upon the amount of legal assistance required. You can be assured that our legal team can help you deal with the legal issues while you focus on the important things, like running your business.
Our General Counsel services include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Corporate and LLC compliance
- Contract negotiation and administration
- Prepare for, attend and run Board and other Meetings
- Employment and Human Resources issues
- Protecting intellectual property/trademarks
- Risk management
- Crisis management
- Joint venture and partnership agreements
- Contract and other legal disputes
- Litigation management
General Counsel Description by Wikipedia
A general counsel or chief legal officer (CLO) is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a company or a governmental department. Or, it can be an outside private attorney who provides a set amount of time each month to act as General Counsel.
In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their duties involve overseeing and identifying the legal issues in all departments and their interrelation, including engineering, design, marketing, sales, distribution, credit, finance, human resources, production, as well as corporate governance and business policy.
This would naturally require in most cases reporting directly to the owner or CEO overseeing the very business on which the CLO is expected to be familiar with and advise on the most confidential level. This requires the CLO/General Counsel to work closely with each of the other officers, and their departments, to appropriately be aware and advise.
Historically, general counsel often handled administrative tasks while outside lawyers in private practice handled more complex legal work. Since the 1980s, however, the general counsel position has become increasingly prominent in multinational companies, often directly advising the board of directors in place of outside lawyers. General counsel are now often among the most highly paid executives of major American corporations, and prominent American government lawyers and law firm partners are often hired for general counsel roles at prominent companies. Similar trends are also being seen in the United Kingdom and other countries.
General counsel often have broad roles encompassing crisis management, compliance reporting management and public policy advocacy. Many companies also hire in-house counsel to handle specialized tasks such as tax work, mergers and acquisitions, labor law and intellectual property, sometimes building in-house practice groups that rival the practices of major law firms.
Brown & Charbonneau, LLP
We can create a custom General Counsel Services Plan tailored to your unique business needs and goals. To learn how the Southern California business lawyers at Brown & Charbonneau, LLP can help you, call us today at 714-505-3000 or schedule an appointment online.