How we work

A lawyer for the life of your company, not just for the deal.

Deal practices are built around financings, so your Tuesday-afternoon question waits for whoever has capacity, and because the clock is running, you stop asking questions. We sit inside the company between the deals, where most legal risk is created and most of it can be mitigated.

Hired for the company

Excellent deal lawyers, organized for a different job.

This isn't about talent. Some firms offer general counsel work, but a practice built around deals rarely builds the day-to-day risk-balancing judgment the job needs.

	A deal firm's corporate practice	Axolotl
What starts the work	An event: a round, a deal, a dispute	Your ordinary course of business, every week
Who does it	A partner on the deal; anyone free for the rest	The same senior attorney every month
Risk posture	Maximum protection in the document	Ranked against your stage, commercial cost and needs
Asking a question	Billable	Included. Early questions are the point.
The incentive	More problems, more hours	Fewer problems. We earn more when your company is clean.

What a first hire actually involves

One question, "Can you help us hire?", turns into nine legal issues.

Two get asked. One sometimes comes up. Six get discovered after payroll is running. We advise on all nine and build the ones that are yours into your onboarding checklist. Firms tend to point these at your ops team, and ops teams point them back at the firm; we're happy to overlap.

Usually askedEmployee or contractor?

Usually askedThe offer letter and the invention assignment.

Usually discovered laterPayroll registration and state employer accounts.

Usually discovered laterWorkers' compensation and the insurance the state expects.

Usually discovered laterExempt or not, pay frequency, final-pay rules, breaks.

Usually discovered laterRequired notices and postings, and the training threshold at five people.

Sometimes askedPromised equity: board approval, 409A, and the paperwork that makes it real.

Usually discovered laterWork authorization, and the form that has to be done in three days.

Usually discovered laterNew-hire reporting, benefits or PEO setup, and what changes at your next headcount.

Illustrative, for a first hire in California.

What legal costs, and when a GC makes sense

A pathway to your own GC, planned from day one.

Early on, a company needs advice but can't justify a GC's salary, so it buys hours from bigger firms and pays in lumps. Those firms are built of specialists, each excellent at one kind of deal, matter or domain, and a company that uses them as generalists pays specialist rates for generalist questions. Our plans give it a GC's function at a price that steps up with stage, until a full-time GC is the better buy, a day we plan for and help make happen. Deal work stays deal work: the specialists remain the right call for the deal.

How to read it: where a line crosses the dashed one, a full-time GC is cheaper: about 12 hours a month with a large firm, 21 with a mid-size firm, around 38 on our plans.

And year by year, a steady line instead of a lumpy one.

Hourly bills jump when work lands, and before a round there is a clean-up: the diligence pile a firm bills to sort out. On a plan the data room is kept current every month, so the round costs what the round costs.

AxolotlMid-size firmLarge firmFull-time GC, salary onlyTotal spent so far, month by month

An illustrative model, not a quote, but very much based on real bills we have seen. The same questions and events sent to each provider; mid-size firm at a $675 blended rate and large firm at $1,200 (2027 rates), both taking half again as many hours as we do on the same work, because they start each matter without our context; a $25,000 large-firm deferral released at the financing; Axolotl at list, big events at flat fees; in-house at a $250,000 salary only. Full assumptions on request.

What the plan builds

Infrastructure you keep, not memos you file.

The same senior attorney every month, a consistent process, advice calibrated to your stage, and fees that price the outcome, not the time.

Plans and pricing

A legal function, not a file. Your checklists, calendar, playbook and data room live inside your company, so they hand off cleanly when you hire a GC.

Fewer surprises in diligence. The data room is kept current month by month, so a round costs what the round costs.

Your team knows what it can sign. A playbook for the agreements you see every week, so nobody calls a lawyer to accept standard terms.

Fewer problems, not more. A flat fee means we earn the same whether you have ten issues or two, so we are paid to prevent them.

Time in person. Office days, founder dinners and, at the top plan, a yearly retreat at Tahoe or in Puerto Vallarta. Most legal is going virtual; the relationship is the point.

How we staff your work

A small team on purpose, with specialists on call.

The same senior attorney every month. Our tools do first passes; a licensed attorney reviews, manages and signs off on everything. For M&A, patents, tax, immigration and litigation we bring in specialists we trust, at their rates, and manage them for you.

Tech-enabled firm. Real people. Coffee's on us.

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