Business counsel
A lawyer who already knows your business.
A fractional general counsel for Alabama businesses, plus the entity and contract work underneath it, on a monthly fee instead of a meter, so the question you have on Tuesday gets asked on Tuesday.
The term
What a fractional general counsel is
A general counsel is the lawyer a company keeps on staff. The one who reads the contract before it is signed rather than after it is argued about, who knows what the partners agreed to two years ago, and who is in the room when a decision is still a decision. It is a good seat to have. It is also a salary, which is why almost no business in west Alabama has one.
Fractional means you buy the part of that seat you actually use. The same standing relationship with a lawyer who already knows the company, for a monthly fee instead of a payroll line, and instead of an hourly meter that makes you think twice before calling.
You will also see this sold as outside general counsel, and most firms use the two names for the same arrangement. Where the difference is real, it is about how close the lawyer sits: outside counsel gets called in when a matter comes up, and a fractional general counsel is the seat itself. The three plans below run from one to the other, and you can start anywhere on that ladder.
Why this exists
The costly legal problems are the ones nobody asked about.
Almost every business owner has the same relationship with legal advice. You call a lawyer when something has already gone wrong, you brace for the bill, and in between you handle it yourself. It is a reasonable way to behave when advice is sold by the hour. It is also why the same failures keep happening.
A contract gets signed because reading it properly felt like an expense. A partner arrangement stays a conversation instead of a document, because writing it down means paying someone to write it down. An employee leaves badly and the file has nothing in it. Not one of those was a hard legal problem at the start. They were questions somebody decided not to ask.
So the fee is monthly and the asking is free. That is the whole idea. You stop calculating whether a question is worth the call, and we stop being the people who only appear on your worst days.
The plans
Three levels, one monthly number
On Call
From $1,000 a month
Questions answered by phone and email, and the routine contracts read before somebody signs them. The point of the flat fee is that asking costs nothing, so the small question gets asked while it is still small.
- 2 hours of attorney time a month
- Answers inside 48 hours
- Routine contracts read before you sign them
Ongoing Counsel
From $2,500 a month
Everything above, plus the work that recurs: keeping the entity and its records in order, the vendor and customer agreements you sign all year, and the employment paperwork that starts arriving once you are hiring.
- 6 hours of attorney time a month
- Answers inside 48 hours
- A sit-down each quarter on what is coming
Fractional General Counsel
From $5,000 a month
The standing legal seat for a company that needs one and is not ready to put one on the payroll. The legal side handled as part of how the business runs, rather than called in after something has already happened.
- 14 hours of attorney time a month
- Urgent questions the same business day, everything else inside 48 hours
- A standing call every month with the lawyer who knows the file
Each number is where the plan starts. What moves it is how many agreements cross your desk, how much of the work recurs, and how much of the legal side you want handled rather than reviewed. You get your figure before anything starts, the same way our families get a flat fee before any drafting begins.
Forty-eight hours is the outside limit on hearing back, counted in business days, and most of the time it is quicker than that. It is also an honest 48 hours rather than a comfortable one: if a question needs a week of work to answer properly, what comes back inside two days is what it will take and when you will have it. Nobody here is going to promise a lawyer picks up on the first ring, because that is not a promise a firm this size can keep.
Hours you do not use roll into the next month, up to one month’s worth. A plan that punishes a quiet quarter is a plan you cancel in the quiet quarter. Work that runs past the hours in your plan is quoted before it starts rather than billed after it finishes, which is the same rule the rest of the firm runs on.
Every plan is month to month, and you can end it with 30 days notice. There is no year to commit to and nothing to buy your way out of.
Work that sits outside the plan, forming a new entity or a matter that turns into a dispute, is quoted on its own. Nothing gets started on the assumption that you will pay for it.
What it covers
The work of running a business, legally speaking
Entities
Forming the LLC or corporation, and getting the structure right at the start rather than unwinding it later. Keeping the records current as ownership changes, partners come in, and the business stops looking like the one you formed.
Contracts
The agreements a business signs constantly: customers, vendors, subcontractors, leases. Including the ones you use over and over, drafted once properly so you are not editing a downloaded template at ten at night.
Employment paperwork
Offer letters, contractor agreements, and the documents that need to exist before a disagreement rather than after it. The paperwork is cheap in advance and expensive to reconstruct.
Planning for the owner
For most small businesses the company is the largest asset the person running it has, and the least likely to be handled properly in a will. That work sits on the planning side of the firm and is quoted separately.
Property the business holds
The deed and lease side of what a business owns or occupies, handled by the same firm that does the real property work for families.
This side of the firm is led by Charles Lane Jones, who is Of Counsel and handles the business, contract, and general counsel work. Property questions run through the same firm that does the deeds and closings for families.
Two things we are not. We are not your accountant. We do not do bookkeeping, tax returns, or the filings your CPA handles, and the version of this that works has your lawyer and your accountant talking to each other rather than duplicating each other. And we are Alabama lawyers. If your business operates somewhere else, we will tell you when something needs counsel licensed in that state instead of guessing at it.
Why this firm
Your company and your estate are the same decision.
For most owners, the business is the largest asset they have and the one their family understands least. It is also the one usually handled by a different lawyer than the one who wrote their will, and those two people have never spoken.
That is how an operating agreement ends up sending a company somewhere the owner’s plan never intended, and nobody finds out until the owner is dead and the family is negotiating with a business partner. Doing both here does not make that impossible. It makes it somebody’s job to notice.
Common questions
The things people actually ask
We only call a lawyer when something goes wrong. Is that not cheaper?
Usually, right up until it is not. The expensive problems in a small business are almost never the ones somebody asked about in advance. They are the contract nobody read, the partner arrangement nobody wrote down, and the employee nobody documented, and each of those was a ten-minute question at the time.
How is this actually different from paying by the hour?
The meter changes behavior, and not in your favor. When every question has a number attached, people stop asking the small ones, and the small ones are exactly where a lawyer is cheapest to use. A flat monthly fee removes that calculation from the moment you most need to be able to ignore it.
Is a fractional general counsel the same as outside general counsel?
Most of the time the two names are sold as the same thing, and if a firm uses one or the other you should ask what is actually included rather than read anything into the label. Where the distinction is drawn, it is about how close the lawyer sits. Outside counsel gets called in when a matter comes up. A fractional general counsel is the standing seat, involved before there is a matter. Our three plans run from the first to the second, and you can start at either end.
How fast do you actually answer?
Inside 48 business hours on every plan, and on the Fractional General Counsel plan an urgent question gets an answer the same business day. That is the outside limit rather than the target, and it is an honest one: if a question needs real work before it has a real answer, what comes back inside two days is what it will take and when you will have it. What we will not tell you is that a lawyer picks up on the first ring. A firm this size cannot promise that, and the ones that do are describing a receptionist.
What is not included in the monthly fee?
Work that is its own project rather than part of running the business: forming a new entity, or a matter that turns into a dispute. Those are quoted separately before anything starts. Work that runs past the hours in your plan is quoted the same way, before it starts, so it never arrives as a surprise line on a bill. We also do not do the accounting, and we are Alabama lawyers, so anything that needs counsel licensed in another state gets said out loud rather than guessed at.
Are we signing up for a year?
No. The plan runs month to month and you can end it with 30 days notice. A subscription that has to be enforced by a contract is not one anybody wants to be on, and the arrangement should be worth keeping every month on its own.
Can you just do one piece of work, without a subscription?
Yes. Form the entity, draft the contract, review the one that landed on your desk this morning. It is a flat fee agreed before the work starts, the same as everything else the firm does. The subscription is for businesses that would rather stop making that decision every time something comes up.
What size business is this for?
The ones too small to employ a lawyer and too busy to go find one every time a question comes up. If your business genuinely has two legal questions a year, you should buy those two answers instead, and we will tell you that rather than sell you a subscription you will not use.
We already did our estate plan with you. Does this overlap?
No, and doing both is the reason to do either here. A business owner usually has a company lawyer and a family lawyer who have never spoken, which is how an operating agreement ends up quietly contradicting a will. Under one roof that stops being a coincidence somebody has to catch.
Tell us what your business is dealing with.
Fifteen minutes on the phone, no charge. If a subscription is more than you need, we will say so.