In-House Counsel

Hire your dream in-house legal team.

Most companies reach a point where legal stops being an occasional expense and starts being an operating function. Contracts pile up. A licensing deal needs structure. An investor asks about your IP chain of title. You need someone who knows your business well enough to answer without a two-hour ramp-up every time.

This is the point where in-house counsel makes sense.

HMLG serves as the in-house legal team for companies who need real legal leadership. We embed with your executive team. We learn your business, your contracts, your risk tolerance, and your goals. Then we operate the way an in-house lawyer operates, which means we proactively come to you before problems surface rather than after.

What In-House Counsel Covers

The scope is set with you, not handed to you. Most engagements include some mix of the following:

• Commercial contracts. Drafting, reviewing, and negotiating the agreements your business runs on. Customer agreements, vendor contracts, partnership deals, statements of work, and NDAs.
• Corporate governance. Entity formation and maintenance, operating and shareholder agreements, board and equity matters, and the recordkeeping investors and acquirers will eventually ask to see.
• Licensing and IP strategy. Structuring how your intellectual property generates revenue and how it stays protected while it does.
• Employment and contractor work. Offer letters, contractor agreements, IP assignment, and the classification questions most companies get wrong early and pay for later.
• Risk management. Identifying exposure before it becomes a dispute, and building the practices to keep it from recurring.
• Deal support. Financings, acquisitions, and exits, including the diligence readiness work determining how those go.
• Escalation and coordination. When a matter requires litigation or a specialist, HMLG identifies it, brings in the right counsel, and manages the engagement so you’re not managing lawyers.

How HMLG Works as Your In-House Legal Team

• HMLG confirms scope in writing before starting. You know the deliverables, the cost range, and the timing before work begins, not after the invoice arrives. For larger projects we prepare a written proposal.
• HMLG responds. Every engagement includes defined communication and response commitments, so you know what to expect before the work starts.
• HMLG staffs for continuity. More than one attorney knows your work. You’re never waiting on one person’s calendar.
• HMLG bills in a structure you choose. We’re not a budget firm and we don’t pretend to be. The quality of the hours counts for more than the quantity, which is the opposite of how the traditional model rewards lawyers. See how HMLG scopes projects and structures fees.

Why an Embedded Legal Team Costs Less Than Calling Outside Counsel

Why an Embedded Legal Team Costs Less Than Calling Outside Counsel

The expensive part of outside counsel is not the hourly rate, it’s the ramp-up.

Every time a problem arrives and you call a firm, someone bills you to learn your business. Then a different lawyer at the same firm bills you to learn it again for a different issue, because traditional firms are organized into siloed practice areas with different lawyers in each. You pay for the same education repeatedly, and you pay for it at the worst possible moment, when something is already urgent.

A legal executive who already knows your business skips all of it. The question gets answered instead of researched.

Who HMLG Works With

HMLG works with companies at every stage, whether or not they already have lawyers.

For companies with no legal function, HMLG becomes the entire in-house legal team. Often the first engagement is building the foundation the company will run on for years, work best done at formation rather than repaired later.

For companies with existing counsel, HMLG adds depth and experience their team does not have in-house, without a separate engagement for every specialty.

Our clients are at all stages of growth, from startups to established brands. We work with media, technology, and creative companies, and the people who build them.

General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer, or In-House Counsel

In-house counsel is the umbrella term for lawyers working inside a business. General counsel is a specific senior role, the top legal executive, operating at the C-suite level and responsible for enterprise-wide strategy and risk. Chief legal officer is the same seat under a different title, used in companies with a broader executive remit.

All of these rolls can be filled on a fractional basis. HMLG does all of it. Which one you need depends on whether the gap is legal execution or legal leadership, and plenty of companies need some of each.