Outside General Counsel Services
Trusted. Your first call.
Sometimes the C-suite in small to medium-sized companies can be a lonely place. Owners and decision makers need trusted business advisors to act as their consiglieres and go-to problem solvers — someone highly responsive, practical and focused on getting them to “yes.” Our Outside General Counsel (OGC) Services team members invest time to deeply understand each client’s business to earn their trust and build lasting relationships with their leadership team.
As outside advisors to your team operating as “deep generalists,” we strive to counsel each client from a place of trust and common understanding, with a keen understanding of your “risk appetite” and a perspective recognizing the opportunities and competitive dynamics endemic to your industry. Our approach not only enhances trust and practical advisory services; it also creates greater efficiencies in advising you on navigating potential roadblocks and achieving key strategic objectives driving the company’s success.
A trusted legal advisor is an essential asset and competitive edge for growing businesses.
Many growing companies inevitably outgrow their outside lawyers, reaching a point where the lack of responsiveness, status quo thinking, and most attorneys’ extremely low risk tolerance (contrary to most of their clients’ risk appetites) becomes an impediment to, rather than a facilitator of, the growth of the business. Our OGC attorneys differentiate themselves from the prevailing lawyer paradigm by being:
The OGC approach emphasizes and hinges on the deep, trusting relationships we continue to forge with our clients. Our OGC attorneys invest significant non-billable time upfront, building a strong relationship with your team and a deep understanding of your business’s challenges and opportunities. We help diagnose the potential problem/opportunity and then provide timely access to our firm’s deep bench of attorneys in all disciplines, who will assist in providing pragmatic advice, along with practical tools and resources to address and resolve dynamic issues. This ensures that we never “learn on your dime” and meet your deadlines for advice and work product. |
Outside General Counsel Team
Get a fresh, informed perspective on your business. Connect with a OGC team member today
Partner
Cincinnati, OH
Partner
West Chester, OH
Practice Group Leader
Nashville, TN
Partner
Cincinnati, OH
West Chester, OH
Office Partner-in-Charge
Florence, KY
Vice Office Partner-in-Charge
Cincinnati, OH
Partner
Houston, TX
Office Partner-in-Charge
Pittsburgh, PA
Office Partner-in-Charge
Columbus, OH
Partner
Louisville, KY
Partner
Nashville, TN
Houston, TX
Practice Group Vice-Chair
Charleston, WV
Office Partner-in-Charge
Dallas, TX
Houston, TX
Unique Value Proposition
We do more than simply address your legal needs through our unique "Get to Yes" approach.
Risk is associated with every move your business makes. We will assist you as you grow in thinking about how to achieve your growth objectives while leveraging (not just reducing or eliminating) risk. Compared with some legal advisors who are adept at saying “no” and primarily tell their clients why they shouldn’t engage in a particular business activity, we understand risk correlates to reward and is a necessary element for increased profitability and growth. We’re not intimidated by risk; however, we prefer calculated risk that can be leveraged to allow for additional opportunity and sustainable growth. We listen to your desired objectives and focus on “getting you to yes” to empower your business.
We know that a company’s growth requires hiring and retaining new talent, acquiring strategic targets, and expanding into new markets with new products and customers. We, along with our firm’s industry teams, are committed to helping you and your team identify and leverage the most profitable or damaging risks associated with any move your company contemplates. This allows us to better assist you in developing processes and strategies to overcome roadblocks and continue progress toward sustained, profitable growth.
Many of our OGC team members have regularly counseled and/or served in companies’ executive leadership teams across a variety of industries. We function as “deep generalists,” operating from a strategic viewpoint needed to diagnose a wide range of potential issues. We also appreciate the dynamic daily changes, “fire drills,” and opportunities inherent in running a business and can quickly and strategically assess how one apparently isolated decision can significantly impact the company’s overall operations.
Our OGC team brings both passion and an avowed commitment to only providing value-added advice and services that empower, not impede, your strategic growth and development objectives. We never learn on your dime. Rather, we invest the time to understand the business, identify areas where we can add value, and only start the clock when providing actionable legal advice or resources.
Our OGC attorneys are proactive, not reactive, problem solvers that work collaboratively with your team to develop customized and readily implementable solutions based on years of experience in creatively advising businesses in entrepreneurial and high-growth industries. We see a lot of deals and are exposed to lessons learned/best practices with myriad clients, and we share that experience with you. Foremost, we are resourceful and determined in helping you achieve your goals—with the requisite skills and foresight, honed through experience—to help you vet important decisions and ensure that all potential positive and adverse impacts are factored into the decision calculus.
Our OGC team is a cross-practice group that contains former general counsel/chief legal officers, senior-level in-house counsel, and other talented lawyers who operate from a common paradigm: we focus on being “a businessperson that happened to go to law school,” not the kind of lawyer who cannot see the big picture or is overly obsessed with risk to the detriment of sustainable growth. You will have ready access to a tremendously talented and deep bench in our firm, including more than 600 attorneys (many with a focus on specific industries) in 18 offices across the U.S., as well as an established outside network of trusted advisors in all disciplines. Should an issue warrant supplemental support, we can engage the right subject-matter practitioners to timely and effectively deliver practical, tried and true value-added advice and outstanding “ready to use” work product.
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