Overview
Maynard Nexsen has a team of attorneys who serve as outside General Counsel for clients across a broad spectrum of industries, ranging from entrepreneurial start-ups to middle market businesses to Fortune 500 companies. We aim to bridge the gap between legal and business by serving as a partner and trusted advisor to our clients’ leadership teams, helping them to navigate the legal aspects of their businesses through a holistic and strategic approach.
We invest in each General Counsel Services client to understand the totality of their business - their culture, operations and risks, and the industries and footprint in which they operate. Through this deep understanding, we are able to provide innovative and cost-effective solutions in real time. We work diligently with owners and management to stay abreast of the goals and challenges of the business as they evolve.
Typically, Maynard Nexsen’s role as outside General Counsel is best served by one, or a small team, of our lawyers functioning as the central point of contact for the relationship in order to provide continuity, consistency, and efficiency to the legal strategy of the business. These lawyers are nimble, business-minded, and pragmatic. They have decades of experience in providing outside general counsel services, and many have served as inside general counsel during their careers. Utilizing the firm’s full-service platform and our proven team approach to client service, we are able to leverage our broad general counsel experience with the specific, and often highly complex, areas required by each client.
We offer our General Counsel Services through a variety of service and fee structures, including retainer, flat-fee, and hourly models, and encourage our clients to be actively involved in developing the structure that works best for them. In our experience, it is also important to maintain an open and transparent line of communication with our clients in order to evaluate service and fee structures on a regular basis and make any necessary or desired modifications sooner, rather than later. This strategy, combined with the natural economies of scale of this type of representation, results in bottom-line increased efficiency and certainty.
Our General Counsel Services Practice Group also provides support to clients with existing general counsel and/or in-house legal departments. Our assistance is often supplemental in the context of special projects or times of unusually high demand, or during times of transition. We welcome the opportunity to partner with our clients’ in-house legal resources on any level beneficial to the success of their business.
As outside General Counsel, we are positioned to coordinate and oversee:
- Entity organization and structuring
- Organizational governance, including development and implementation of documents, policies, and procedures, as well as counseling in regard to governance best practices and fiduciary duties
- Risk management assessment and strategy
- Regulatory compliance, internal and external investigations and audits, and crisis management
- Strategic initiatives such as business continuity and growth, including ownership and leadership succession
- Development of policies and procedures to support the business, including privacy and information security policies and procedures
- Trademark, patent and other intellectual property protection, monetization, and strategy
- Real property transactions, including acquisitions, dispositions, and commercial leasing
- Development and implementation of business systems such as customer contract management and supply chain management
- Commercial contracts, licensing agreements, and investments
- Workforce management, including hiring, retention, termination, immigration, employee handbooks, non-compete, and non-solicitation agreements, independent contractor agreements, and benefits
- Executive compensation, including stock options and equity and non-equity based incentive compensation
- Supporting and negotiating business opportunities, including mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, buy-outs, recapitalizations, and divestitures
- Acquisition, disposition, and management of special assets such as aircraft, vessels, fleet vehicles, and recreational facilities
