Outside General Counsel for Technology Companies
The Legal Problem
Technology companies at the growth stage face a common dilemma: they have ongoing, cross-matter legal needs that transactional representation handles poorly, but they are not yet large enough to justify a full-time in-house general counsel. Transactional representation — engaging a different attorney for each discrete legal matter — is expensive per-matter, produces no institutional memory, and fails to integrate legal strategy across the company's activities.
Outside general counsel (OGC) solves this problem by providing an ongoing strategic legal relationship at a predictable cost. The OGC functions as the company's de facto general counsel — coordinating legal matters across practice areas, building institutional knowledge of the company's technology and business, and providing strategic legal advice that is integrated with business decision-making rather than reactive to it.
What guibert.law Delivers
- Ongoing legal advisory relationship across IP, contracts, employment, regulatory, and corporate matters
- Coordination of specialist counsel when needed (litigation, patents, regulatory filings)
- Contract review and negotiation for customer agreements, supplier agreements, and development contracts
- IP portfolio monitoring and strategy
- Board and investor meeting participation as required
- Legal risk identification in business decisions before they become legal problems
guibert.law Insight
The ramp-up cost for transactional legal representation — the time a new attorney spends learning the company's technology, IP portfolio, key relationships, and prior legal work before they can give advice — is real and is paid by the client on every new engagement. For a company with complex IP, regulatory obligations, and cross-matter legal activity, this repeated ramp-up cost typically exceeds the cost of an OGC arrangement within twelve months.
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