Meet Me! Attorney Q&A with Beth Lebowitz

What do you do for your clients?

I’ve been an Outsourced General Counsel now for almost four years and this type of practice has revolutionized how I view the practice of law. I work in my client’s offices and know their team, from the sales reps to the executive leadership to the dev team. Together we craft solutions to mitigate risk and creatively address issues proactively. My goal is to be the first person the CEO or CFO calls when they want to discuss a new product, an internal process, or an upcoming deal or transaction. The company pays a flat monthly fee, just like a salary. This creates a much deeper, ongoing, and collaborative relationship between attorney and client, which I absolutely love.

When meeting with new prospects and companies, we talk about what their pain points are, not necessarily what I do. Because what I do as an Outsourced GC is to find ways to solve their problems, whether that be implementing equity management and corporate governance technology, taking over the sales contract negotiation process, organizing, updating, and managing their contract templates, or simply answering legal questions from the entire team.

 

Why did you decide to become an attorney? 

My legal practice started with early stage start-up companies because I loved getting involved from the ground-floor and helping founders make decisions to set their companies up for success. From there, I started working with later stage, growth companies, and the opportunity to get involved at a leadership level to support corporate executives in making decisions was a natural and exciting progression.

Fundamentally, my goal in practice is to completely change the nature of the attorney – client relationship. I work with a small, core group of companies that I know very well and that know me very well. There is no question of when or whether to call the attorney. In the business context, I believe having a business-minded attorney on your team can make a huge difference.

 

What gets you up in the morning? How do you typically start your day?

As a mom, I wake up early, around 5 AM, to get a proactive head start on my day before spending time with my daughter. Baked into the Auxana Outsourced GC model is a fundamental belief that we can all be entrepreneurial, and we can maintain flexible work and personal time that best suits each individual schedule. I do not believe in 9 to 5 or M to F but I do believe that attorneys should control their schedules and work in a way that provides a better, more responsive, and flexible service for their clients and for their personal lives.

 

Why did you decide to become an Auxana GC? 

I created the Outsourced General Counsel model with my personal firm, Nimbus Legal. I started Nimbus because I knew there was a better way to provide an in-house, sophisticated legal resources to growing companies earlier in their business life cycle and to rid both attorney and client of the billable hour. The billable hour tends to crush innovation in the legal industry and creates an incentive misalignment in the attorney-client relationship from the outset.

In the first few months of practicing as an Outsourced GC, I knew I was on to something based on the reaction of my clients and companies in the market. Auxana is the platform where we hope to grow this method of practicing and consuming business legal services nationwide.

 

What is your stance on the innovation of the legal industry?

At the same time, I’m equally excited and encouraged by companies innovating in this space and frustrated with the slowness of adoption and change in an industry that is fairly adverse to innovation!

Innovation in the legal industry takes many forms and we support all of these efforts. Our model is to provide the human element – our Auxana GCs are experienced business attorneys and general counsel that work with your business and utilize a lot of the legal tech that is currently in the industry and being built. Our premise is that growing companies need an attorney in-house + legal technology for long term success, not one without the other.

 

What would you do if you weren’t an attorney? 

I am writer at heart and would love to be a novelist, author of children’s books, and food and travel blogger!