Your group needs a general counsel — but not a head office to house one?
Outside general counsel for groups and subsidiaries: contracts, corporate housekeeping, board support and cross-border policy on an ongoing retainer — with partner access and a fixed SLA.
What we solve
Between “no in-house lawyer” and “a legal department” sits most of the cross-border mid-market: groups that sign contracts every week, hold board meetings in three time zones and discover gaps in their corporate records at the worst possible moment — during a deal, an audit or a bank review.
The retainer model closes that gap. A named team that knows your group, a defined monthly scope with partner oversight, and a four-hour response window during business hours. The legal function exists; the head-office overhead does not.
What we do
Ongoing retainer
A defined monthly scope with partner oversight, response SLAs and a named team that knows your group and its history.
Contract management
Drafting, review and negotiation of the commercial contracts the business signs every month.
Corporate housekeeping & resolutions
Minutes, resolutions and registers kept in order; Hong Kong company filings completed with a locally licensed agent.
Cross-border policy
Group policies — delegation, contracting, data, compliance — written once and made to work in every jurisdiction the group touches.
Board support
Preparation of board materials, governance calendars and advice to directors of holding entities.
Vendor & commercial contracts
Frameworks and templates for procurement, distribution and services, so each new deal starts at eighty per cent done.
Representative experience
Outside general counsel to a trading group
Acted as ongoing counsel to a group with entities in four jurisdictions: contract flow, board calendar and corporate housekeeping under a single retainer.
Contract framework for a regional distributor
Built a template suite and negotiation playbook that cut contract turnaround from weeks to days.
Governance reset after rapid growth
Reconstructed registers, resolutions and intercompany agreements for a group that had outgrown its paperwork.
Matters are described without identifying parties or amounts. More representative matters.
Partners recognised in Chambers and Legal 500.
Recognition sits with the individuals who run your matter — not with a logo. The partners responsible for this practice are listed in the leading independent directories.
- 01Initial meeting and conflict check, then a written assessment of your situation.
- 02A proposal with a clear fee structure and scope before any work begins.
- 03The matter is run with regular updates and direct partner access.
- 04A result report and a recommendation on next steps.
The team for this practice
Victor Lazarev
Cross-border transactions, English-law deal documents, sanctions and AML compliance.
Timothy Kwok
Corporate law, transactions, due diligence.
Leonid Kim
Corporate and transaction support.
Adrian Wong
M&A, investment transactions, corporate law.
Questions clients ask
How does the retainer work?
A defined monthly scope, a named team, partner oversight and agreed response times. Anything outside scope is quoted separately before work begins — no surprises in either direction.
Which legal systems can you cover?
We advise on international and foreign law — English-law contracts, offshore corporate matters and cross-border policy. Matters of Hong Kong law, including registry filings, are handled with locally licensed firms under our coordination, so your group still has one point of accountability.
What response time can we expect?
An initial response within four hours during business hours (UTC+8), with delivery timelines agreed per task. The SLA is written into the engagement, not implied.
Can you work alongside our existing local lawyers?
Yes — the model is built for it. We act as the coordinating counsel and instruct or work alongside local firms in each jurisdiction, including Hong Kong.
When does a retainer make sense compared with ad-hoc instructions?
When legal questions arrive monthly rather than yearly. If the group signs contracts, holds board meetings and faces bank or audit requests as a matter of routine, a retainer is cheaper in attention — yours — than instructing from scratch each time.
What does onboarding to a retainer look like?
A short audit first: corporate records, contract templates, open obligations and the approvals map. It surfaces what needs repair before routine service begins — and it gives the named team the context to answer quickly ever after.
Can one retainer cover several group companies?
Yes — most of ours do. Scope is defined at group level with named entities, so subsidiaries in different jurisdictions draw on the same team, the same templates and the same SLA instead of instructing separately.
From the Corporate Counsel cluster
What an outside GC retainer should actually include
Corporate housekeeping: the audit you fail silently
Board calendars for holding companies that actually hold
Practitioner notes for this practice are in preparation and will appear in the Corporate Counsel cluster.
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