▍ Operating retainer
A $30M services company consolidates outside counsel.
We became the primary legal relationship across contracts, employment, real estate, and governance, routed through one senior partner at a predictable monthly cost.
Most companies grow into needing serious legal counsel before they grow into hiring a general counsel. We sit in the seat in the meantime: a senior, on-retainer legal department that handles the everyday work, the harder questions, and the long-term decisions every operating business eventually faces.
Talk about retainer counselGeneral Counsel is the in-house legal department a closely-held company has not yet hired. We work on a monthly retainer with senior partners directly on the file, covering contracts, employment, real estate, governance, IP and licensing, and the cross-practice questions that come up across a working year. When a litigation matter or a transaction breaks out of the routine, the same team handles it without a hand-off to a new firm. The arrangement keeps cost predictable and institutional memory in one place.
Fixed monthly engagement covering the routine legal questions a working company generates, with senior attorney as your point of contact.
Customer, vendor, supplier, distribution, licensing, and service-provider agreements. Drafted clean, negotiated tight, signed quickly.
Offer letters, executive agreements, equity grants, handbooks, accommodations, departures, and the harder HR moments that come up every quarter.
Office leases, real-estate amendments, vendor and contractor agreements, and the operational real-estate work a growing company generates.
Trademark protection, copyright registration, technology and IP licensing, and the IP-assignment paperwork hiring brings up.
Privacy policies, data-processing agreements, vendor security review, and the compliance work that comes up with a growing customer base.
Annual coverage review, claim coordination, policy renewals, and the coverage-dispute work that comes up after a claim is denied.
The first 24 hours after something has gone wrong: a regulator, a press inquiry, a customer event, an employee crisis. Senior attorney on the call.
Board-level and ownership-level strategic conversations that benefit from outside, senior counsel without a new engagement letter.
A senior partner serving as the company’s de facto general counsel on a defined monthly engagement. For companies between in-house hires, or those scaling toward one. Defined scope, with the rest of the firm available when a matter calls for a specialist.
General Counsel clients return for the same three reasons. None of them is the hourly rate. It’s the relationship and the responsiveness.
You meet the partner who will be your point of contact. They’re the one who picks up your call about the contract next week.
Business, real estate, employment, litigation, estate, tax, nonprofit, international. Whatever the matter is, the right lawyer is down the hall, inside your retainer.
We set the retainer at the start, review it annually, and tell you when something is outside the scope before it becomes a surprise bill.
A working conversation about the company, the legal calendar, and the volume of work the retainer needs to cover. No charge for the first conversation.
We propose a monthly retainer scoped to the company’s actual usage, with a clear list of what’s in scope and what gets billed separately.
Document audit, contract library review, ownership and governance review, and the introductions that orient the firm to your business.
Standing call once or twice a month, plus same-day responsiveness for the matters that come up between. Senior attorney as your point of contact.
When a transaction, dispute, or significant capital event arises, we run it the same way we would for a non-retainer client, with the in-firm specialists who’d normally handle it.
Once a year we review the engagement: retainer level, scope, and the legal calendar ahead. The relationship is built to last, not to renew indifferently.
Multiple firms, slow answers, and surprise bills. We consolidate the work, set a monthly retainer, and become the primary legal relationship across business, employment, and real-estate matters.
Long-standing relationships with several lawyers across firms. We become the central legal contact, with the in-house team coordinating tax, estate, and business work across the family’s holdings.
We provide a senior, on-retainer legal department for a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. The company adds an internal GC when the legal calendar genuinely justifies one.
We provide the day-to-day legal coverage and the strategic counsel a board needs when an acquisition, sale, or significant capital event is on the horizon. Continuity matters most here.
We became the primary legal relationship across contracts, employment, real estate, and governance, routed through one senior partner at a predictable monthly cost.
Operating-agreement cleanup, contract harmonization, employment-document refresh, and the diligence-readiness work that made the eventual sale move quickly when the buyer arrived.
Senior attorney on the phone within the hour, response strategy mapped over the weekend, and the matter resolved within forty-five days without escalation.
Most retainers fall between $3,000 and $10,000 per month, depending on company size, legal volume, and the scope of work. We’ll quote your engagement in writing after the first conversation, and the retainer is reviewed annually.
Most contract review, employment counsel, governance work, and day-to-day questions are in scope. Major transactions, litigation, and project-based work (capital raises, acquisitions, large disputes) are usually billed separately, with a written budget upfront.
Continuity and predictability. We learn your business once and stay current quarter after quarter, which makes every answer faster, every contract sharper, and most of the harder questions easier.
Usually around the time legal work is consuming more than 15 to 20 hours of an executive’s week or more than $200,000 in annual outside legal fees. We’ll tell you honestly when we think it’s time. We’d rather coordinate with a great in-house GC than gatekeep the work.
Yes. The engagement runs month to month after the first quarter, and either side can end it with thirty days’ notice. We’d rather it work for the long term.
Senior attorneys, predictable cost, and the legal department your company hasn’t hired yet.
Oseran Hahn P.S. · 11225 SE 6th St, Suite 100 · Bellevue, WA 98004
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