Every serious company needs a general counsel. Very few need to hire one.
Boland Law Group sits as outside general counsel to closely held companies across Arizona: the standing adviser who knows your contracts, your people, your regulators, and your owners, and who answers when the decision cannot wait.
The rise of the fractional general counsel
Companies have learned to hire senior finance and marketing leadership by the fraction. Legal is following, and quickly: businesses of every size are engaging seasoned general counsel on a standing, part-time basis rather than carrying the role on payroll.
The arithmetic explains why. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s 2024 compensation survey put median cash compensation for a general counsel above $400,000 a year, before long-term incentives, benefits, and support staff. Most closely held companies cannot justify that seat full time. All of them still need what sits in it: judgment that knows the company, applied early, before problems mature into matters.
An outside general counsel arrangement delivers the seat without the payroll, and adds something a single hire cannot: a firm behind the chair, with decades of experience across industries, entity types, and transaction structures.
† Association of Corporate Counsel, 2024 law department compensation survey, median cash compensation for a general counsel or chief legal officer, before long-term incentives. The second bar is illustrative only. It is not a quote, a fee, or a ratio; every engagement is scoped and priced in writing before work begins.
What the seat covers
Six standing functions, handled the way an in-house general counsel would handle them: continuously, in context, and before the deadline arrives.
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Governance and records
Minutes, resolutions, annual filings, and the formalities that keep the liability shield intact. For many closely held companies, eroded formalities are the largest unrecognized risk on the books, and the cheapest one to fix.
- Entity maintenance and good standing
- Board, member, and manager resolutions
- Ownership and equity records
- Governance practices that survive scrutiny
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Contracts and negotiation
Vendor, customer, lease, partnership, employment: the documents that define your relationships and allocate your risk. We read them the way an owner reads them, then negotiate them the way counsel should.
- Drafting, review, and negotiation
- Risk allocation and indemnity
- Renewal and termination calendars
- Templates worth reusing
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Employment and people
Hiring, separation, classification, handbooks, and the policies underneath them. Guidance before the decision is made, so that the file defends itself if it is ever questioned.
- Offer and separation packages
- Contractor classification
- Handbooks and workplace policies
- Restrictive covenants that hold
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Regulatory compliance
Whatever your industry answers to, we keep the obligations mapped, the documentation current, and the response ready before the letter arrives. An inquiry answered well in week one rarely becomes a matter.
- Obligation mapping by industry
- Licensing, filings, and renewals
- Audit and inquiry response
- Records and retention practices
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Disputes and litigation management
When a dispute lands, we are the first call. We assess, position, and resolve, or brief and manage specialist litigation counsel while the business keeps moving. Counsel who already knows your history is worth the most in exactly these moments.
- Early assessment and strategy
- Demand and response posture
- Settlement and resolution
- Litigation counsel management
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The owner’s whole picture
Most corporate counsel stop at the entity. We advise the owners too, so the contract, the estate plan, and the family’s tax position move as one decision instead of three surprises.
- Estate and entity integration
- Succession alignment
- Tax posture across both books
- Family governance
Counsel to the company. Counsel to the people who own it.
A typical outside general counsel arrangement sees one circle: the entity. We sit inside all three, because the owners of the companies we counsel are usually our private clients as well.
That vantage point changes the advice. We see how a customer contract touches the estate plan, how an entity restructuring moves the family’s tax position, how a partnership dispute could reach into a trust, and how a compensation decision opens a planning opportunity. Corporate counsel who never see the personal side miss these intersections entirely. We work at them daily.
It is a rare arrangement, and it is where most of the value hides.
How we serve business ownersWhen the phone tends to ring
Companies rarely wake up wanting a general counsel. One of five moments makes the case for them. Better to have the seat filled before any of them arrive.
The first serious contract
An enterprise customer sends forty pages of their paper, and asks for signature by Friday.
Growth outruns the org chart
Headcount, new states, and complexity arrive before legal does. Something has to catch up.
Capital, acquisition, or exit ahead
Diligence rewards companies whose records were kept all along, and reprices the ones whose were not.
The regulator writes
An inquiry answered well in week one rarely becomes a matter. Answered late, it usually does.
A dispute lands
The first forty-eight hours decide more than the next year. Counsel who knows you moves fastest.
Already have a general counsel? We make the seat stronger.
Legal work does not arrive evenly. It surges around deals, disputes, audits, and quarters, and a legal department staffed for the average is understaffed for the peaks. We serve as standing outside counsel to in-house teams: briefed once, on call after, absorbing the overflow without the onboarding tax of a new firm each time.
- Surge and overflow counselStanding capacity for contract volume, deal support, and the quarter that arrives all at once.
- Arizona counsel for a national departmentLocal knowledge, local relationships, and boots on the ground in Scottsdale and the Valley.
- A tax controversy benchAudits, examinations, and disputes handled by attorneys who do this work daily, not occasionally.
- Personal planning for the executive suiteEstate and succession work for your leadership team, coordinated with equity and compensation.
- Coverage and continuityLeave, transition, or an unexpected vacancy, bridged without a gap in the seat.
- A second opinion, without the politicsPrivileged, independent, and candid, when the board or the CEO wants one more set of eyes.
Four steps to a standing relationship
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A conversation
Call the office. We listen first: the business, the owners, what keeps arriving on your desk that should not.
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A scoped charter
What the seat covers, the cadence, and the fee, set out in writing in an engagement letter before any work begins.
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The first ninety days
Records reviewed, contracts calendared, open risks ranked. You will know where the company stands, in order.
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Counsel on call
A standing cadence of review, and a phone that gets answered when the decision cannot wait for one.
Passionately Preserving Wealth™
Arizona’s private client attorneysThis page is provided for general information and does not constitute legal or tax advice, nor does it create an attorney-client relationship. A relationship arises only on a signed engagement letter; do not send confidential or time-sensitive information before one is in place. Descriptions of our practice are general in nature, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Market compensation figures cited on this page are drawn from third-party published surveys, are presented for context only, and are not a representation of this firm’s fees; no fee is binding unless and until set forth in a signed engagement letter. The firm practices in Arizona; matters governed by another jurisdiction’s law are handled with local counsel where required. This page may be considered attorney advertising under the rules of some jurisdictions.