General Counsel for Hire

If your business requires senior legal advice, but you cannot justify the G&A spend for a full-time hire, and you’re also reluctant to engage a traditional law firm for every matter that needs legal review, Gusto Law may be an ideal solution that reduces your overall costs.

With a base billable hour rate that’s on par with big firms’ second or third year associates, Gusto Law offers twelve years-plus of experience over a large range of corporate-commercial matters, all provided at a deeply discounted price.

The benefit of hiring an in-house resource is that they become integrated in every facet of your business. The tricky balance is knowing whether there is enough work for the business to justify a full-time counsel long-term.

The standard approach is to engage a traditional law firm on an ad hoc basis to cover these uncertain periods — but this can become expensive. Gusto Law offers the benefit of general counsel-level advice without the premium hourly rates generally charged for this type of work.

Short-term in-house solutions may include hiring a lawyer on a fixed-term contract or engaging a staffing agency to backfill a role for several months. In both cases, hiring for the short-term often costs more than hiring traditional salaried staff. Additionally, finding the right fit for a short-term engagement is difficult in the current labour market.

Gusto Law is a one-stop alternative for all of those solutions: like an external law firm, Gusto Law can be engaged on an ad hoc basis but at more much competitive rates; and like a short-term or part-time contractor, we offer fixed fee, all-inclusive weekly and monthly rates for when your business requires dedicated, on-call service.

To an outsider, Gusto Law can appear to be part of your management team, with email addresses on your email system, documents housed within your native file management systems, and an extension on your phone systems. We will quickly acquaint ourselves with your internal processes and external relationships.

Gusto Law takes a flexible approach to general counsel-level work, offering the following arrangements:

• Ad hoc hourly rates for everyday corporate-commercial legal needs;
• Flat-rate fee work for getting through tough transactions or dealing with staffing transitions;
• A set weekly or monthly rate when you require more committed availability.

Our rates compare very favourably with the alternatives and represent a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time general counsel or traditional law firms at their hourly rates.

If you would like to discuss your needs, schedule a free 20-minute consultation.

This webpage’s content has been prepared to provide a general overview of certain legal services offered by Gusto Law, and is not intended to be an exhaustive legal analysis. It is not a substitute for legal advice and should not be relied upon for any particular transaction, proceeding or circumstance. The information is provided as of the date set out below, and thus the reader is cautioned that changes or developments in the law, or its interpretation, may have occurred since that time. If you are forming a new business, please seek further individual consultation with Gusto Law.