Do you have a lawyer working as a general counsel?Do you have a lawyer working as a general counsel? Yes No How involved is your lawyer in these issues?Understanding your business and unique risk toleranceYour lawyer should be business savvy and willing to learn your company's business. The value of a lawyer providing advice with context about the company, its industry, its risk tolerance, and its competitive position, greatly increases the company's overall business value. Setting the company's strategic legal agendaYour lawyer should be incorporated early in your business planning process to assist in setting the company's strategic legal agenda. Involving the lawyer in business discussions early provides issue identification before business strategies are set, while options can be considered. Positioning the lawyer in this way greatly improves a company's issue identification process. Catching the potential issue before it is a fire is a great way to avoid legal issues becoming a runaway train. This can be accomplished through attending management meetings, quarterly updates.Taking responsibilities for all legal issuesYour lawyer should be actively involved in managing the legal function just like other business functions. That is, legal activities should tie into strategic initiatives of the business, maintain budgetary accountability, and strive for process improvement. Much like other aspects of a business, having a lawyer with oversight responsibilities will increase issue awareness and allow for substantial gains in the company's overall performance.Assessing the overall legal health of the company annuallyYou should work with your lawyer to annually assess all aspects of the company's legal health, including current execution and assessment of risk going forward. As a company grows and evolves, it is important to continue to assess what risks have grown, been introduced, or changed. To do so helps ensure that the highest priority issues are being addressed.Participating on management teamYour lawyer should participate on the company's management team. Too often management views lawyers as a necessary evil to be kept at bay from the business and brought in only upon a clear legal issue surfacing that only a lawyer can address. This misses the benefit of issue identification and a lawyer's critical think.Ensuring compliance with corporate governance documents (Bylaws and Operating Agreement)Your lawyer can be of great value in helping keep necessary legal formalities observed to avoid missteps in corporate governance (e.g., Bylaws and Operating Agreement).Managing owner and investor relationsYour lawyer should assist the company in the development of policies and procedures to manage owner and investor relations to reduce any potential risk for the company. There must be mechanisms to continuously monitor the effectiveness of programs and the actual adherence to the company's policies.Organizing contracts and reducing riskYour lawyer should lead your company's strategy in the development of a Contracts Management system to assist your company to understand its contracts, through execution, both at initiation of the contract and later preventing loss of visibility to their terms that increases risk. A good contracts management system is critical to realizing the value of the agreements your company enters into to run its business and to reduce risk that may result from non-compliance to contract terms.Actively looking for ways to reduce legal costsOne of the key impediments to the proactive, strategic and partnering relationship with lawyers that delivers the most value to a company is high legal costs resulting from the traditional hourly billing. However, engaging your lawyer proactively or by committing to an ongoing dialogue on reducing legal fees, agreeing to a fixed fee or a flexed fee with upside for savings or penalty for overage can result in better alignment of objectives and better value delivered. To be effective, the goal of both parties must be that it works for both sides.Setting legal and compliance company policiesWhile there are certain standards and laws that apply to all businesses, they may vary in significance, complexity, or priority in different industries. Your lawyer should help your company understand which regulations and laws apply to the company as this is essential to compliance. Once the standards are understood, your lawyer should assist the company in developing procedures that are effective in meeting those standards customized to the characteristics and structure of the company.Training on company policiesYour lawyer should assist your company in developing training programs on the company's policies. Having an ongoing program for training and communication on company policies are critical to developing understanding, keeping the company up-to-date, and reinforcing the culture of compliance to its policies. It is also very important as evidence of good corporate citizenship when regulators or government investigators look into alleged wrongdoing.How important are these issues to your company?Understanding your business and unique risk toleranceSetting the company's strategic legal agendaTaking responsibilities for all legal issuesAssessing the overall legal health of the company annuallyParticipating on management teamEnsuring compliance with corporate governance documents (Bylaws and Operating Agreement)Managing owner and investor relationsOrganizing contracts and reducing riskActively looking for ways to reduce legal costsSetting legal and compliance company policiesTraining on company policies Tell us about your company.Yearly Revenue$5M$101M +(estimated)Licensing/Contracts per month011+(estimated)Employees1150+(estimated)Litigation011+(cases per year)Corporate Public Private Multiple Classes of Equity Subsidiaries Intellectual Property Trademarks Patents Copyrights International Operations Import/Export International Locations and Operations Current average monthly cost of legal counsel$0$50K+(estimated) We have created a personalized report for your company. Fill out the information below to receive this report.Your position President / CEO CFO Partner Other Are you the decision maker? Yes No Your Name* First Last Your Email* HiddenSavings Output 37226
