There are a very large number of lawyers and an even larger number of clients out there in the legal market, and that’s a good thing. Just as every species has its own skillset and food niche, so that there’s room for every kind of animal, bird, fish, and insect to live, thrive, and survive, so, too, there’s room for every company and lawyer to do what they do best.
But the legal market can also be confusing. If you contact one of the big law firms, you may get billing rates that start upwards of $500 per hour and large teams of lawyers, such that even small deals at Big Law can run to tens of thousands of dollars. And sometimes lawyers focus on particular areas of law that businesses may not need or want. So it’s easy to have a mismatch between lawyers and clients. That would be ok, except that a mismatch can lead to very high legal bills without the required legal services being delivered in a way that companies need. A mismatch can actually hurt companies.
For that reason, it would be great if there could be some kind of screening process where reasonably-priced business lawyers who don’t work for Big Law could be paired with small- to medium-sized companies that need their services in cases where interstate and international legal services are required. That way, the mismatch never should happen – or if a mismatch does happen, it should be a quick fix to find a different lawyer, because it should just be a matter of personalities or other quirks rather than lack of fit because of billing rates and market niches.
That’s exactly what Inside Outside Counsel does. We are a dedicated in-house fractional general counsel services platform that pre-selects lawyers who appear on the platform to ensure that only lawyers who want and understand the economics of serving small- to medium-sized businesses will be on the platform. And only lawyers who deal with business law and have done so for at least 5 years of legal practice will be there to serve companies’ needs, to ensure that the lawyers are experienced. Unlike many fractional general counsel services, where you don’t really know which attorneys you’re getting to do the actual work, Inside Outside Counsel gives companies the opportunity to work with a single dedicated outsourced fractional general counsel attorney, who will become familiar over time with the company’s business and the personalities of its officers and employees. That means lawyering is not a “black box” where the actual work is done by people who don’t know the business. Rather, both the business and its dedicated fractional general counsel know each other and can be creative by understanding the business from the inside. All of this at legal fees that are predictable, affordable, and meet the exact needs of both the attorney and the company the attorney serves. In addition, the Inside Outside Counsel platform is easy to use and provides all the non-legal services lawyers and clients need, including billing, document storage, chat, and customer service support. Nothing less than a revolution in small- and medium-sized business legal services for companies that are expanding and need to do business interstate and abroad.
