In-House
“Our ‘Innovators In-House’ seconded law firm model allows us to seamlessly integrate with our clients’ legal departments or, where they don’t have an established legal department, to help them begin creating one. As retained in-house counsel, our Innovators In-House practitioners provide our clients with tailored legal services that meet their specific needs. Through this approach, we gain a deeper understanding of our clients’ business goals and legal needs, leading to cost-effective legal services and value creation for our clients while controlling legal spend.”
Partial secondments refer to the arrangement where external lawyers and other legal practitioners dedicate all or part of their working time within a client’s business. This model is beneficial to clients as it provides them with access to legal expertise while also allowing them to maintain control over their legal team’s structure and budget. The benefits of partial secondments include increased collaboration between the law firm and the client, cost savings, and a more efficient workflow. For law firms, this approach provides a deeper understanding of their clients’ businesses, leading to better legal advice and long-term relationships.
We refer to this as our “Innovators In-House” service model, and this is a core competency of our team. Often, our retained in-house counsel can take the role of a general counsel, retained in-house IP counsel, or even an entire legal department that can grow and scale with our client’s business.
Innovators In-House Services
The General Counsel is a senior executive responsible for managing the legal affairs of an organization, with a particular focus on risk management, compliance, and strategic business initiatives. The General Counsel works closely with other executives and business units to identify, evaluate, and manage legal risks while ensuring that the company is compliant with relevant laws and regulations. In addition, the General Counsel plays a vital role in providing legal guidance and advice on strategic business initiatives, such as mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and partnerships.
Overall, the General Counsel’s expertise and guidance are critical to the success and sustainability of the organization. Our Innovators In-House attorneys have experience as General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at every scale, from early-stage and growth-stage companies to multi-billion-dollar global companies operating across more than 100 countries. We bring that experience and expertise to help companies at every stage effectively implement business objectives and minimize legal risks.
Intellectual Property (IP) and other intangible assets will be one of many businesses’ most significant drivers of enterprise value. Yet, the complexity of the process and expense means that many companies fail to execute an IP strategy adequately. The Chief IP Counsel is a senior executive responsible for managing an organization’s intellectual property assets, including patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
The Chief IP Counsel plays a critical role in developing and implementing the organization’s IP strategy, which includes identifying and protecting valuable IP assets, structuring joint-development, licensing, and other IP agreements, and enforcing IP rights while minimizing infringement risks. The Chief IP Counsel is also responsible for managing the organization’s IP portfolio, including maintaining and expanding the portfolio, and ensuring that the organization’s IP assets are properly registered, maintained, defended and aligned with the technology development and business strategy. At Innovators Legal, our practitioners bring a deep technical understanding of our client’s products, processes, technologies, and business plans to help them create a right to win in the marketplace.
A unique aspect of our team at Innovators Legal is our experience working in university technology transfer and licensing. When retained as a Licensing Associate or Licensing Officer within a Technology Transfer Office (TTO), our team helps to manage the commercialization of the university’s intellectual property assets. This role involves identifying and evaluating new technologies, working with faculty inventors to assess the commercial potential of their inventions, and developing strategies for protecting and licensing intellectual property. We can also assist our TTO clients by engaging in business development activities to identify potential licensees and negotiate licensing agreements.
Additionally, we can work closely with internal and external stakeholders at the university, such as patent attorneys, business development professionals, and industry partners, to manage the licensing process and ensure that all parties are aligned with the organization’s goals and objectives.
Acting as the Corporate Secretary, Innovators Legal can help the administrative and legal affairs of a corporation, with a focus on compliance, board management, record-keeping, and shareholder relations. The Corporate Secretary ensures that our clients operate in compliance with relevant laws and regulations, manage legal and regulatory risks and implement policies related to ethics, conflicts of interest, and other important areas.
We can take responsibility for organizing and managing board and committee meetings, preparing agendas, recording minutes, and ensuring that the board operates effectively and transparently. As the Corporate Secretary for your company, we can also be responsible for maintaining accurate records of board meetings, corporate resolutions, and other important corporate documents. Additionally, we can serve as the primary point of contact for shareholders, managing communications and the voting process for annual meetings.
Overall, the Corporate Secretary role we fill for our clients is crucial, ensuring that the corporation operates efficiently, transparently, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations while fostering positive relationships with shareholders and stakeholders.
Supporting an entire legal team, even at larger companies, can be difficult. Innovator’s Legal can act as a fractional legal department, supporting companies that cannot afford a full-time legal team or that need to supplement their legal team for a period of time. A secondment of an entire legal team allows our clients to scale their legal departments as needed, without incurring the long-term costs of building a full-scale legal department.
For many clients, they are just beginning to build their first legal department—bringing Innovators In-House can be a cost-effective way to quickly establish legal expertise within the company, This is just another one of our innovative approaches to providing legal services that allow us to closely partner with our clients, scaling legal services that can benefit companies of all sizes, from startups to multinational corporations.
Innovator’s Legal can support businesses needing a legal professional for a short-term or fractional need. This approach can be particularly beneficial for legal departments or tech transfer offices facing unexpected workload spikes or staff absences, as it allows them to maintain continuity in their operations while ensuring that important projects are completed on time.
Additionally, secondments can provide valuable opportunities for professional development and networking, as team members are exposed to new ideas, perspectives, and ways of working. Overall, secondments are a flexible and cost-effective way to address short-term staffing needs while also promoting professional growth and collaboration.
Our experienced attorneys, agents, and paralegals have the necessary skills and experience to fill in during an absence or handle a specific project.
Why should you consider having retained in-house counsel?
Irrespective of whether you are a startup developing new technology, a research university, or a venture capital investment firm, there can be many benefits to having competent legal professionals that are retained internally to your team. It provides more predictable and consistent legal spending and can even lower costs for legal services. Even more critical, our in-house counsel brings the benefits of a deeper understanding of your company and can respond with agility to any sudden business needs. Companies with retained internal counsel will also typically experience fewer problems arising from inattention to the proactive and preventive legal tasks that help companies create value and manage risks.
Today, more than ever, clients can engage fractional in-house counsel to elevate their business to the next level. In the new, modern, remote workforces, our team has been able to serve retained in-house counsel roles from coast to coast, helping entrepreneurs, tech transfer offices, and investors more effectively manage their legal risks, create significant value through their intellectual property, and navigate the complex business relationships and transactions necessary to bring new technologies to the market.