Eric is joined by Chris Carol, Associate Attorney at Revision Legal. Chris shares his prior experience as in-house corporate legal counsel for a variety of different entrepreneurs throughout his career and how he applies this to his work with Revision Legal.

Is Your E-commerce Business Ready for In-House Counsel?

Episode Outline:

Intro

• Welcome to May it Please the Internet

• Intro to Chris

◦ Chris joined in 2021, previous experience working in-house

◦ Chris, explain who you are, past experience in general terms, etc.

• Topic

◦ Here today to talk about whether your eCommerce business is ready for in-house counsel

◦ What is in-house counsel and what do they do?

▪ Oversight over legal issues for entire business

• Handle certain issues for the business

◦ Internal corporate matters

◦ Contracting

◦ Some employment

◦ Regulatory / licensing issues

• Outsource and work with outside counsel for other matters

◦ Litigation

◦ IP

◦ Employment

◦ Tax

◦ Property

▪ Quasi-business advisor

• Identify risk

• Ask tough questions

• Generally kill dreams (but just playing devil’s advocate)

▪ The main point is that you have someone with legal training in the room, part of the planning process, and hearing the input/issues raised by various departments within the company

◦ Different types of “in-house” counsel

▪ Standard is hiring an attorney and putting them on the payroll

• This is right for certain types of businesses

◦ VC firm, highly regulated industries, or big enough where legal is a constant issue

▪ But “in house” can be a good fit even for businesses that don’t fall into those categories, but it would be at a smaller scale

• Fractional in-house or “outsourced in-house”

◦ What it really means is having a regular and constant legal voice in the business, on whatever scale makes sense

◦ We do this in a number of ways

▪ Attend certain meetings

▪ Regular weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly meetings

▪ Being a part of a company’s Teams/ Slack channel

▪ Attend company retreats

• What are the benefits?

◦ We touched on this already, but its about having that voice in the room

◦ Yes, we may identify more problems than a true risk-taker, but we can also save time

▪ If you come up with a plan for doing a massive online sweepstakes as a central marketing effort, spend a bunch of time and money, then at the last minute say, we need to run this by legal, you may have wasted a bunch of time

▪ Of course cost is a concern, but in my experience, the problem with legal fees is usually the unpredictable nature, not the cost itself.

▪ If you can find a predictable budget, even flat fees, then this can work

▪ Wrap it up

• In house essential for some businesses

• Can benefit all businesses and the cost can be made predictable

• Having that different voice in the room can save time

May It Please The Internet is a podcast brought to you by REVISIONLEGAL.COM