Howdy Partner! How to partner with an Outsourced General Counsel and gallop to success.

You are a business owner whose business has grown by leaps and bounds through your own hard work. Over time, you recognize that you cannot do it all, so you hire—a sales manager, a plant manager, a chief financial advisor, a safety manager, to name a few. When you have a legal issue, you give that issue to your CFO to hire and handle an outside lawyer to handle that one issue. Your CFO becomes overwhelmed. The outside lawyer who is handling this issue does not have the background to know what the real issue is that turned this into a problem. The outside lawyer is not part of the team but is just a “hired gun” to fix the one problem. Your CFO is irritated, as there are additional legal issues that pop up and now that CFO has to hire other attorneys to handle the other matters. The CFO has to manage the outside attorneys hired, but has a hard time knowing what the outside attorney should do, whether the outside attorneys are doing a good job, or if they are overcharging the company. Does this sound like you?

You, as the business owner, just want to focus on your growth, but you keep getting drawn back into various legal issues by your CFO. You do not think that you need or can afford a full-time general counsel. So, you keep limping along still focused on legal issues instead of your growth.

There is an alternative to this issue—that is to hire an outsourced general counsel (OGC), who acts like they are your general counsel as if they have an office next to yours. They have a background of the history and culture of your firm. They get to the bottom of the legal issues that you have and find solutions to them so that they do not reoccur. This may mean that your OGC recommends and finds HR training for your employees, or safety training for your plant employees, managing the HR section of your business.

Lest you think that the OGC should only handle those issues, the right fit OGC should also be involved in your growth. For instance, a good OGC is part of your vision process for your company. As part of that vision, you may be looking to acquire companies or their books of business. Your OGC can determine issues about the potential company that will make that company a bad fit. Alternatively, the OGC can help you structure a proper offer so that your company will have the best tax impact on the purchase. Many times there are other ways to structure a deal so that the team in the company that you are acquiring can be incentivized to help grow the business.

All these things can help your company grow more quickly. If you have the right OGC and work with the OGC to make them part of your team, you can gallop to your success!

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Denice Gierach

Gierach Law Firm

Denice Gierach is an attorney, CPA, Northwestern University business master's graduate, and has owned several businesses from real estate to manufacturing. She is the lead attorney at Gierach Law Firm in the Chicago area. With more than 30 years of experience, she has been a respected and sought-after resource for businesses looking to grow, sell, solve problems, and succeed long term. Her insights across business areas gives a fuller lens to business issues and solutions, and helps businesses grow and succeed with less time spent on legal issues and other time-consuming problems.

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