Outside General Counsel
Shipman recognizes that many businesses rely on outside counsel to act as their in-house legal counsel or to supplement in-house legal counsel. Shipman serves as outside general counsel to those businesses without in-house legal counsel, and is available to provide support to supplement the experience and capacity of clients with in-house legal counsel. We regularly act in a general counsel role for a large number of clients across a variety of industries and customize our services based upon each client’s individual needs.
Our lawyers understand and appreciate each client’s need for cost-efficient and reliable legal advice from lawyers that understand and appreciate their business and objectives. From start-ups to the large privately-held entities, our multidisciplinary team acts swiftly and effectively to implement the right solutions for each client based upon their specific business needs, whether it’s handling employment, intellectual property, immigration or real estate matters, helping with tax, benefits, or contracts, or any other business issue. We regularly offer clients the opportunity to have our lawyers work at the client’s place of business for short or longer-term periods.
Our experience as outside general counsel includes:
- Corporate formation
- General business and compliance matters
- Contract drafting, review and negotiation
- Corporate governance matters
- Corporate transactions
- Employment matters
- Taxation matters
- Immigration matters
- Intellectual property matters
- Secondments
Corporate Governance
Increased regulatory scrutiny, heightened disclosure requirements and rigorous enforcement practices place a tremendous amount of pressure on companies to maintain stringent corporate governance programs. Shipman lawyers are thought leaders in the corporate governance sector and regularly counsel our for-profit and non-profit clients on a wide range of governance issues, including board structure and composition, committee structure and charters, executive compensation, codes of ethics, special investigations, conflicts of interest, mergers and acquisitions, and related party transactions. Our expertise covers the full range of corporate governance and fiduciary duty issues and includes compliance issues concerning federal and state securities laws, privacy and data security laws, antitrust laws, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, Connecticut, Delaware and other state corporate, non-stock, limited liability company and partnership laws, and New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq rules and regulations.
We also provide advice to boards, board committees, and individual directors and managers on best governance practices, including reviewing and updating organizational documents, government investigations, internal investigations and enforcement proceedings. For our tax-exempt clients, we provide advice on the management policies and practices that have been identified by the IRS as critical to good governance, including policies on conflicts of interest, executive compensation, joint ventures, endowments, whistleblowers, document retention and destruction, and preparation and review of the IRS Form 990.
