By Tanuja A Akkannavar
Businesses hire legal assistance to help them manage their risks. Inadvertent non-compliance with rules and regulations can result in considerable financial liabilities for businesses in the form of fines or third-party damages. Strategic faults in business models can result in market share loss or unanticipated increased expenses, harming long-term profitability, if a detailed grasp of the rules influencing a business or sector is lacking.
Contracts, leases, and other commercial agreements bind the company to commitments in exchange for money, and if they aren't well examined, they might lead to unexpected obligations or the loss of deal benefits. All of these factors, as well as others, motivate firms to seek the advice of legal counsel to avoid risk.
It's also a wonderful way to bridge the gap when a company needs to supplement their current in-house team temporarily, or when they have a big project coming up that their current team won't be able to handle on their own. So, why should you hire a part-time in-house counsel?
Following are some of the Top Benefits of Hiring an In-House General Counsel –
1. Competitive Advantage –
The business/legal climate of today is smart, complex, and frightening. Fast-moving organizations benefit from timely practice guidance from company knowledgeable in-house counsel, which helps them stay out of problems and well ahead of the competition.
2. Support’s Company Growth –
Small and large organizations alike benefit from in-house counsel's quick advice, with in-house legal counsel, a company's chances of growth and development are increased. Most significantly, in-house counsel will identify legal difficulties for you, allowing you to avoid problems in the first place rather than reacting to them after the fact. In terms of qualifications, seek someone who will get along with your coworkers and, above all, has experience in many legal sectors. As a result, he or she will be able to give guidance and recognize problems in any legal area that may arise.
3. Provides Seasoned Legal Experience –
When a company need outside legal assistance but has a limited budget, it will generally seek out junior lawyers who offer a lower hourly rate than senior attorneys with greater experience. This means they get less professional competence, it will take longer, and they will almost always need someone from the company to manage the connection.
You will get a highly qualified legal partner that can function independently and support both day-to-day legal work and larger strategic compliance projects with fractional in-house counsel. People who opt to work as fractional in-house counsel frequently have experience working in-house at well-known, blue-chip organizations and have years, if not decades of practical, business-minded experience. This means they're more interested in working as part of a team to handle legal problems most efficiently and effectively possible, rather than acting as a roadblock to company progress.
4. Adds Strategic Value –
When you hire in-house counsel, you are making a strategic decision to help your company grow and develop more smoothly. Important company choices and strategic business planning are aided by in-house attorneys. CEOs have discovered that bringing on a team member with a unique combination of legal and commercial skills improves strategic execution and helps the company avoid unnecessary risks and liabilities.
5. Cost-Effective –
Because most businesses cannot afford to hire full-time in-house counsel, they must rely on expensive traditional firms to handle routine legal matters. Those six-figure fees are frequently out of their budget, and while there is always legal work to be done, most businesses can't justify hiring someone full-time. If they choose to outsource the task to a typical firm, they will pay significantly higher hourly rates and will require project management from within the company.
Fractional in-house counsel enables firms to hire skilled, experienced, and trusted experts to manage the whole legal function on a part-time basis. You get a deeply integrated legal partner for a fixed monthly charge with a fractional in-house counsel model, and you never have to worry about being "on the clock".