OUR STORY

From the beginning

We started Kaleo Legal in 2008, determined to forge a better way to practice law. Having just left his position as Chief Legal Officer of a NASDAQ listed company, Brian Wainger recognized firsthand that the billable hour system skews the incentives for outside counsel, and fails to put the client’s goals at the forefront of the relationship. So Brian began providing general counsel services on a flat fee, monthly retainer basis to his client. Tina McRae joined him in 2009, having previously spent her career as a full-time in-house lawyer at Norfolk Southern, and began serving as a fractional in-house counsel to NS. Billy joined them in 2014, after spending most of his career as lead counsel on large-scale intellectual property litigation around the country. He was drawn to the idea of redefining the relationship between client and outside counsel, on a basis other than billable hours, which Tina and Brian had perfected over the past several years. As a group, our attorneys aim to become part of our clients’ executive teams, providing not just legal services but using our considerable experience to provide business consulting services as well. We are more than just our client’s lawyers – we are their business partners.

ABOUT US

What we do

We are not like other law firms. We don’t bill by the hour, and we don’t have large offices and support staff. Our firm was founded on the principle of providing sophisticated, experienced in-house counsel to our business clients, on a full-time or fractional basis, in a way that most closely approximates an employer-employee relationship. 

That being said, our model is not to provide contract attorneys merely to fill seats in our clients’ legal departments. To the contrary, we become an extension of our clients’ in-house departments, expanding their capacity in a cost-effective manner with seasoned counsel, but without adding headcount to the company’s payroll.  We take a team approach to servicing our clients, providing direct access to each member of the firm whenever they need us.

Our primary objectives are to add value, experience, and expertise to the legal team, while at the same time reducing their workload and enabling them to achieve their legal and business objectives efficiently.  Staying true to our founding principles, we have built a practice that consists of primarily two types of alternative fee arrangements: (1) a fractional general counsel practice, on a fixed monthly retainer, and (2) flat-fee, per-project arrangements for our niche areas of expertise.