Inward, with itself
How the company is formed, owned and governed. Incorporation and structure, the cap table and equity, founder arrangements and vesting, the board, decision rights and internal policies.
A company's legal foundations are tested long after they are laid. The weaknesses that surface then often begin on day zero, when they could have been addressed with far greater precision and less disruption.
Many companies begin before their legal obligations and exposures are fully understood. Founders are building, hiring, testing and developing products, contracting, handling data, and raising capital at speed. Those actions carry legal consequences that may affect the long-term viability of the business.
Our work is to offer early legal clarity and continuing counsel as the business develops. We help founders put legal order around the company's structure, operations, assets, obligations and records, so that future investment, commercial relationships and regulatory scrutiny are met on foundations that are defensible and built to endure.
Day one is when a company begins. The decisions that shape it are made on day zero, before there is anything standing on them.
Rather than a long list of practice areas, we work across the three directions in which a company has legal relationships.
How the company is formed, owned and governed. Incorporation and structure, the cap table and equity, founder arrangements and vesting, the board, decision rights and internal policies.
How it does business and protects what it builds. Commercial contracts, hiring and employment, customer and supplier dealings, partnerships, and intellectual property.
How it meets its obligations. Regulatory compliance, data protection, tax and licensing, prepared for the scrutiny the company will face as it grows.
Investment readiness is not a fourth category. It is the result a founder gets when these three are done well, and the point at which capital, counterparties and regulators each examine a different one of them.