Outside General Counsel
In-house insight. Outside your payroll.
As your company grows, legal questions come up weekly, but the volume rarely justifies a lawyer on salary. Fasthoff Law Firm serves as your outside general counsel, handling the contracts, disputes, and risk decisions you confront week to week for far less than the cost of an in-house hire.
In a given month, Hank reviews and negotiates the contracts you have to sign, prosecutes or defends your disputes, resolves an employment question before it hardens into a claim, and protects the trademarks, content, and data your business depends on, along with general advice as you need it. When a matter calls for a specialist in a field he doesn't handle, Hank brings in tax, estate, insurance, or other counsel and manages them directly, so you keep one relationship instead of juggling several.
Because Hank already knows your contracts, your history, and your tolerance for risk, he can render advice quickly and in a way that fits your needs instead of starting from scratch with each new question. That continuity is what separates an outside general counsel from a lawyer retained one problem at a time, though he handles one-off matters too. The engagement scales as you grow, heavier during a financing or a product launch and lighter when things are quiet.
Hank has served as outside counsel to startups, to established companies, and to high net worth individuals managing their legal affairs, so you get a lawyer who already understands your business when a deadline or a dispute arrives. Every engagement works toward the same result, counsel a phone call away when you need to decide, instead of starting from ground zero.
Services Include
- Contract review and negotiation
- Vendor, customer, and partner disputes
- Employment and independent contractor questions
- Trademark, copyright, and data protection
- Commercial risk assessment
- Demand letters and collections
- Coordination of tax, estate, insurance, and litigation counsel
- Ongoing counsel scaled to the business
Outside General Counsel Insights
When Your Business Needs a Lawyer on Call: How Outside General Counsel Works and When It Makes Sense
Most growing businesses reach a point where calling a lawyer once or twice a year isn't enough but hiring one full-time isn't justified. Contracts need reviewing before they're signed, not after a dispute reveals a problem. Employment questions come up every time someone is hired, promoted, or let go.
Read articleContract Review for Operating Businesses: What Your Attorney Should Check Every Time You Sign
A business owner who signs a vendor agreement without legal review is accepting terms someone else's attorney drafted to protect someone else's interests, and finding out what those terms mean when a dispute reveals a provision the owner didn't know was there.
Read articleEmployment Law Basics for Texas Business Owners: Hiring, Firing, and the Rules Between
Texas is an at-will employment state, and most business owners understand that to mean they can hire and fire anyone for any reason at any time. That's roughly correct. At-will employment has exceptions, and the rules governing how you classify workers, what you pay them, how you document the relationship, and what you owe when the relationship ends are more detailed than most business owners realize.
Read articleHandling a Demand Letter: What to Do When Your Business Receives One
A demand letter is a written assertion of a legal claim accompanied by a request for payment, performance, or some other remedy. No one has filed anything with a court yet, but the letter is the opening salvo in a dispute, and how you respond to it often determines whether the dispute ends with a negotiated resolution or escalates into litigation.
Read articleVendor and Customer Disputes: When to Send a Demand Letter and When to File Suit
Every operating business will eventually have a vendor who doesn't deliver what it promised, a customer who doesn't pay what it owes, or a counterparty who breaches a contract. How you handle that dispute affects whether you recover what you're owed, how much you spend doing it, and whether the business relationship survives the process.
Read articleAnnual Legal Audit for Growing Businesses: What to Review Every Year to Prevent Problems You Don't See Coming
Legal problems in operating businesses tend to build quietly over months or years while the business owner is focused on revenue, operations, and growth. An entity falls out of good standing because nobody filed the franchise tax report.
Read articleRelated Work
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