If you design and build, you make legal calls every day, often without a lawyer on payroll. We serve as outside general counsel for design and construction. We work on demand, embed with your team, and focus on practical answers that keep work moving toward win-win outcomes.
Comprehensive Support Across Project Life Cycle
Our support covers planning, contracting, execution, and closeout. We align delivery, scope, price, and schedule. We negotiate a wide variety of AIA and non-AIA contracts and riders, so risk sits with the party best able to manage it. We coordinate with lenders, insurers, and consultants. We set up clear change management, pay applications and lien waivers, notices, documentation, and closeout so obligations are met and surprises stay rare.
Practical, Day-to-Day Legal Guidance
Day to day, this means plain English support where it matters, such as the decision memo before a go/no-go, the markup that makes a project workable, the difficult meeting that needs a steady hand, and the letter that protects position without blowing up the relationship. We also build simple tools such as checklists, responsibility charts, and playbooks so the right habits stick.
Representative General Counsel Support
Representative general counsel support includes:
- Advising an architect when a structural defect raised health, safety, and welfare concerns, clarifying duties, reporting steps, and immediate controls while the design team investigated.
- When an out-of-state lawsuit was nearing default because no answer had been filed, coordinated next steps with local counsel and guided the client on jurisdiction and procedure.
- During a cyberattack that disrupted operations, guided an architecture firm on triage, client communications, and protection of confidential information.
- Advising on insurance strategy when a policy exclusion threatened coverage, mapping responsibilities, and coordinating next steps to keep protection in place.
- In a government procurement challenge with a contract award at stake, advised on strategy, deadlines, and documentation.
- Counseling a design-builder through a dispute with its subsidiary that placed multiple projects at risk, focusing on governance, communications, and options to avoid internal litigation.
- Preparing a risk and insurability analysis for a public-sector contract, identifying provisions that shifted unmanageable risk and recommending practical revisions for the client’s decision.
- Resolving two intellectual property matters for a design practice in separate files: one involving a copyright claim by an outside party and another involving an employee’s misuse of designs.
- Helping a contractor correct a licensing error and address related labor-classification exposure so work could continue without penalties.
- After an owner’s insolvency left materials unused, negotiated a practical outcome that preserved payment position and avoided waste.
- Responding to an escrow agent’s demand for the return of funds by analyzing the governing terms, coordinating with the title company, and preserving the client’s payment rights.
- Preparing lender consent and contract-assignment documents on a private project while preserving mechanics lien and intellectual property rights.
- Advising an international design firm on licensure and registration across multiple states. In a separate matter, counseled a client responding to a licensing board complaint.
- For a design-builder facing an injury lawsuit, recommended incident protocols, insurer coordination, and collection of project documentation to reduce exposure.
- Guiding a client through a subpoena response in third-party litigation, narrowing the scope and limiting the disruption so the business was not pulled into a dispute it did not own.
- Drafting a limited warranty tailored to modular fabrication, transport, and on-site setting and installation.
- Building a repeatable contract and risk strategy for a landscape architecture practice, including playbooks and fallback terms.
- Working with municipal authorities to correct violations issued to the wrong entity, eliminating penalties, and avoiding record impacts.
Dispute Avoidance and Resolution
When issues or problems surface, our bias is nipping them in the bud. We are all about dispute avoidance. And when claims arise, we have a singular focus on early, cost-efficient resolution. We solve problems through negotiation or mediation when a fair outcome is on the table. If not, we litigate or arbitrate with focus. When payment is at risk, we record mechanics liens promptly and prosecute them for claimants – or defend against them on behalf of project owners and real estate developers – to secure your rights.
Flexible Engagement Options
Our engagement is flexible. We can work on a flat-fee basis, not-to-exceed budgets, hourly billing, subscription counsel for steady month-to-month support, or other structures that fit how you operate.
The through line is the same: clear advice, workable documents, disciplined execution, and disputes handled before they become distractions.
Trusted by a Wide Range of Clients
Clients include private owners and family offices. We also advise developers, architecture and engineering firms, design-builders and contractors, property managers and associations, investors, and lenders. Our lawyers are licensed in Illinois, Arizona, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California. We are able to assist with projects in most other states as well, under the applicable legal ethics rules.
Contact us today to discuss how our flexible general counsel support can keep your projects on track and protect your interests
