Outside Perspective
Inside Familiarity
As your General Counsel, Bill works year-round as part of your inside core leadership team while maintaining the objectivity and candor of a trusted outside advisor. His process-oriented and proactive approach provides clear, solid and instructive foresight. So you may plan more strategically and operate more efficiently. He develops deep and ever-increasing institutional knowledge to become ever-more effective at defining your legal requirements and managing your investment in legal services.
Working with a limited number of clients, Bill becomes your dedicated resource to provide you with legal strategy, resource budgeting and oversight, money- and time-saving process improvements, advice, and the expandable capacity of specialized legal and professional services expertise from Bill's long-standing relationships.
Program Features
Using knowledge from his nearly three decades of working with organizations like yours, the program is built around your entities’ requirements each year and includes the following to assure you have the legal counsel you need when you want it:
Onboarding Audit
Your Legal "department" health check
The audit provides a multi-dimensional, business-wide assessment of gaps in legal “infrastructure,” process, and risk. A multi-disciplinary team assembled for your industry, business position, and strategy offers fresh perspective and jumpstarts familiarity with your business. You mitigate, if not fully avoid, the risk of unplanned expenses and disruptions a establish a strong foundation for your planned growth.
Legal Resource Plan
Proactive legal resource management
Bill's participation in your annual Strategic Planning sessions contributes to strategy development and informs a Legal Resource Plan with detailed requirements, deliverables, budget, timeline, accountabilities, recommended third-party resources, and an impact metrics dashboard for the coming fiscal year. The Plan allows you to budget time and money with intention and foresight that supports your strategic direction. You reduce deadline-driven drama and expensive surprises, focusing your resources on core competencies and other matters more impactful than backtracking.
Legal Project Management and Communications
On. It.
As your centralized contact for all things Legal, Bill coordinates all legal specialists, your staff, and third parties to efficiently further the Legal Resource Plan and ad hoc needs – without your needing to followup. Combined with Bill’s continuous process-improvement attention, his resource oversight assures timely response, eliminates expensive back-tracking, and puts an end to chasing professionals who should be a step ahead of you not behind.
Year-Round Plan Updates
Adaptation to changes
Using the agreed Legal Resource Plan, budget variance report, and the impact metrics dashboard, Bill monitors for changing conditions and prepares for course corrections. He updates the legal budget, deliverables status, and other progress indicators to proactively manage resources, workflow - all with foresight and decision-chains created for your organization's governing requirements.
Board and Advisory Meetings
Advocacy and foresight
Bill participates by phone, video conference, and in person in a cadence of planned sessions and as needed to provide a proactive legal perspective – before, during, and after key decision-making.
Ongoing Ad Hoc Counsel
There when you need him
By phone, video conference, or in person, Bill is your single point of contact for all your legal needs, questions, and any ensuing action.
Expandable Talent & Capacity
Flexibility without the cost
When your company's strategy requires additional talent and/or capacity, Bill connects you with specialized legal and professional services from his long-standing relationships. Those he doesn't yet know about, he's well-connected and discerning enough to source on your behalf. Any such third-party engagements bill you directly to assure Bill's all-in advocacy for you without hidden fee markups.
Accumulating Value
Over Time
Increasing impact the longer we engage
Bill designed the General Counsel program to be not just a bridge during high growth, but for many portfolio companies, it is the right model for legal resource management year-after-year. The program is designed to grow with your organization not only by providing General Counsel plus expandable talent and capacity resources. The ultimate value of Bill's outside inside counsel is how ever-increasing institutional knowledge makes him ever-more effective at forecasting your legal requirements and managing your investment in legal and professional services. Yet by doing so from outside the organization, he maintains an objectivity and ability to engage candidly in all conversations.
Investment
The General Counsel program was built to assure you always maintain the financial controls your growing venture needs while having access to Bill’s best client advocacy and management of legal and professional services resources. This commitment starts with his own billing model that eliminates financial surprises and unbounded hourly compensation authority.
Instead, you get Bill's access, oversight, and expertise for a value-based investment at a fraction of what it costs to staff a full in-house legal department - yet with the flexibility to adapt to your ventures' changing needs.
Your annual investment in the General Counsel program starts at $300k. The Annual Legal Resource Plan will detail scope and value-based cost for any foreseeable additional capacity from Bill which is always subject to your advance approval. And should your needs increase at any point, Bill offers a change order protocol for any budget variance beyond your approved contingency for Bill’s service.