Morgan is on a limited schedule from July 1st — Sept 1st for Maternity Leave. Email us at info@morgandavislegal.com and someone from our team will be in touch.
The best time to call your lawyer isn’t after something goes wrong.
Davis Legal works differently. We build long-term relationships with businesses to understand where you are, where you’re headed, and what could get in the way.
Think of us as your “out-of-house” in-house counsel: a strategic legal advisor you can bring into the ongoing conversations around growth, contracts, compliance, governance, risk, partnerships, and long-term planning.
Here are some of the questions we hear most often about working with Davis Legal.
Yes, and more.
We provide legal services, but our goal is to become a strategic advisor to your business, not simply the attorney you call when you need a document drafted or a problem fixed.
That means we want to understand how your company operates, what you’re building toward, where your risks are, and what decisions are coming next. The more we understand your business over time, the more useful our advice can become.
We want legal strategy to be part of your business strategy.
Fractional general counsel gives your business ongoing access to legal guidance without hiring a full-time attorney internally.
You may also hear this called outside general counsel. At Davis Legal, we sometimes describe it as being your “out-of-house” in-house counsel.
We become familiar with your business, leadership team, contracts, compliance needs, goals, and risk profile so that when a question comes up, you aren’t starting from scratch with a new attorney every time.
It depends on your business, but ongoing counsel can touch nearly every part of running and growing a company.
Davis Legal may help clients with:
Sometimes our job is to draft the document. Sometimes our most valuable role is simply being in the room early enough to ask the questions you haven’t thought to ask yet.
Our ongoing counsel model is best suited for businesses that are past the point of needing a lawyer once every few years.
You may be a good fit if your business is growing, entering new markets, navigating regulation, adding partners or employees, signing contracts regularly, making significant strategic decisions, or simply reaching a level where legal questions are becoming part of everyday business.
We particularly understand businesses operating in highly regulated or quickly changing industries, including hemp and cannabis, health and wellness, plant wellness, and other innovative businesses.
Davis Legal is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and works with businesses from North Carolina and beyond.
Both — but the type of relationship may look different.
A founder launching a new company may need a substantial one-time project to establish the right legal foundation. A growing or established company may benefit more from ongoing fractional counsel that can stay involved as the business evolves.
During the initial conversation, we’ll talk about where your business is today, what you’re building toward, and what type of legal support actually makes sense.
For most ongoing relationships, no.
Davis Legal is moving away from the traditional hourly legal model and toward subscription-based legal support. Instead of wondering whether every email, phone call, or question is adding another line to your bill, clients choose a level of ongoing support based on how much access and involvement their business needs.
We believe that structure encourages something important: talking to your lawyer before the problem gets expensive.
We offer different levels of ongoing support based on how frequently your business needs us and how deeply you want Davis Legal involved.
Depending on the level of service, that can include recurring strategy meetings, scheduled calls, ongoing legal and regulatory guidance, document review, planning, and prioritized access to our team.
Our highest-touch relationships include regularly scheduled meetings and priority response from Morgan or the Davis Legal team, generally within 24–48 business hours.
We’ll recommend the appropriate level based on your company, industry, goals, and anticipated legal needs.
Yes.
Not every legal need requires an ongoing subscription. Davis Legal accepts select project-based engagements, particularly substantial projects that may take several weeks or months to complete.
What we’re moving away from is small, disconnected hourly work that doesn’t allow us to understand the larger context of your business.
If you’re unsure which category your project falls into, start with a consultation.
Because by the time something becomes a legal emergency, your options may already be limited.
An ongoing relationship gives your attorney context. We know how your company operates, what agreements are already in place, what you’ve been planning, and what risks we’ve discussed before.
That allows the conversation to shift from:
“We have a problem. What do we do?”
to:
“We’re thinking about doing this next. What should we consider before we move?”
That’s the relationship we’re trying to build.
Legal advice is always at the center of our work, but we don’t look at legal questions in isolation.
A contract decision might affect your growth strategy. A regulatory change might change where you sell a product. A partnership disagreement might reveal a governance problem. An expansion plan might require changes to agreements that were written years ago.
We look at the bigger picture and help clients understand how legal considerations fit into the decisions they’re already making.
Yes.
Sometimes business partners don’t need litigation or formal mediation. They need a knowledgeable third party who understands the business and can help structure a productive conversation.
Morgan can sit down with owners or leadership teams, identify the legal and business issues underneath the disagreement, ask questions the group may not have considered, and help everyone understand potential paths forward.
It isn’t mediation. It’s strategic counsel.
Businesses change every year. Unfortunately, their legal documents don’t always change with them.
An annual legal review gives us an opportunity to step back and look at what has changed across the business — ownership, employees, products, contracts, regulations, partnerships, growth plans, policies, and risk.
From there, we can identify documents that should be updated, compliance issues that deserve attention, and legal priorities for the year ahead.
We like to think of it less as a legal checkup and more as legal planning for the next chapter of your business.
We don’t want an annual review to become a box-checking exercise.
We sit down with you and look backward and forward:
What changed this year?
What’s working?
What’s keeping you up at night?
What’s happening in your industry?
Where is the business trying to go next?
What legal infrastructure needs to change before you get there?
Then we turn that conversation into priorities for the coming year.
This is one of the biggest advantages of having an attorney who already understands your business.
Often, yes — but it depends on the expense and your tax situation.
The IRS generally allows businesses to deduct attorney and professional fees that are ordinary, necessary, and directly related to operating the business. Some legal expenses must be treated differently, however, so your accountant or tax advisor should determine how a particular expense should be handled.
Yes. Hemp and cannabis regulatory work is a significant part of Davis Legal’s practice.
We work with businesses navigating federal and state regulation, product and operational compliance, contracts, licensing, manufacturing, labeling, marketing, distribution, and the other legal questions that arise in an industry where rules can change quickly.
For these clients in particular, having counsel involved before a regulatory problem develops can be invaluable.
No.
Davis Legal works with entrepreneurs, startups, health and wellness businesses, nonprofits, and companies in a variety of industries. The common thread tends to be leaders building something thoughtful, innovative, or complex who want legal counsel that understands the business behind the legal question.
Yes.
For businesses operating in regulated industries, legal compliance shouldn’t be a document you prepare once and put on a shelf.
We help clients understand regulatory developments, evaluate how changes may affect their operations, and determine what — if anything — the business should do next.
That ongoing context is one of the biggest advantages of a long-term counsel relationship.
We start by learning about your business.
We’ll want to understand what you do, where you are now, what you’re trying to accomplish, and what legal questions or concerns prompted you to reach out.
From there, we’ll determine whether Davis Legal is the right fit and whether your needs make the most sense as an ongoing counsel relationship or a project-based engagement.
That depends on the level of support you select.
Some clients need periodic strategic guidance. Others want Davis Legal deeply integrated into their business with recurring meetings and frequent communication.
Our subscription structure is designed so that the amount of access grows with the level of support your business needs.
Morgan remains closely involved in Davis Legal’s client relationships, while members of the Davis Legal team may also assist with your work depending on the matter.
Higher-touch subscription clients receive prioritized access to Morgan and the team, including recurring meetings and defined response expectations.
We’re probably a good fit if you’re looking for a lawyer who will learn your business, think ahead with you, ask hard questions, and stay involved as your company evolves.
If all you need is someone to complete an isolated legal task at the lowest possible cost, we may not be the right firm.
If you want legal counsel who can become part of the team you’re building around your business, let’s talk.
Build a relationship with legal counsel who already knows where you’ve been and can help you think about where you’re going next.
