Should You Hire In-House Counsel?

If you are a company with legal needs, you may be thinking of hiring in-house counsel. There are some pros and cons to hiring in-house counsel, which you should consider before making a decision.

What Do the Numbers Say?

To some extent, having in-house counsel is an economic decision, which requires that you crunch the financial numbers.

Ask yourself whether your company is currently spending so much money on legal fees for outside attorneys that it would be cheaper to just hire a salaried attorney full time.

If the answer is yes, perhaps in-house counsel is right for you. But remember that hiring an attorney doesn’t just entail salary; it may entail other expenses as well, namely, a paralegal, as the secretaries or office staff that your business has, are likely not qualified to act as a paralegal assistant to an attorney. And a qualified in-house attorney for a larger company may demand up to $200,000 yearly, an amount that a smaller or mid-sized company may not be ready to pay for.

Help or Hindrance?

In-house counsel can be a benefit or a hindrance.

On the one hand, it may be a relief to have an attorney right there, at the ready in office, to handle your legal matters, and you aren’t paying that attorney any extra; in fact, breaking down the attorney’s yearly salary, it may end up being much more cost-effective than outsourcing your legal needs on an hourly basis.

Having an attorney in-house may make you more likely to ask the attorney about possible legal issues proactively before problems blow up into lawsuits.

On the other hand, you don’t have the chance to avoid legal fees the way that you do when you hire an outside attorney. In other words, in a potential legal conflict, you can opt not to pursue litigation, or you can opt to settle disputes to lower or minimize legal fees. But this doesn’t work with an in-house attorney, who has to be paid regardless of whether you have a lot of lawsuits and legal needs, or very few, in any given month or span of time.

General or Special Knowledge?

In-house counsel can be helpful, in that he or she knows you and your business. But often, no one attorney can handle every single legal need.

For example, a general in-house counsel business attorney may not have specialized knowledge about intellectual property, venture capital, SEC regulations, or employment law. That means that your in-house counsel may still need to communicate with outside counsel, meaning that you may end up paying two attorneys for a given problem, when you could have just been paying one.

Without in-house counsel, your business can rely on multiple outside attorneys with whom you have established relationships, each bringing knowledge in their own specialty.

For guidance on managing your company’s ongoing legal needs, consult the West Palm Beach business law attorneys  at Pike & Lustig, LLP.

This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a licensed attorney regarding your specific situation.