For Lawyers: Counsel Involvement 101

This article outlines the interaction between lawyers and their clients on Shoobx.

Registering Legal Counsel

1. The company starts the Register Legal Counsel workflow, and inputs the contact information for their preferred counsel.
2. Shoobx sends an invitation to the lawyer to login or create a new Shoobx account.
3. The lawyer will indicate which of the available workflows should always require their review, and which workflows can be set to "review optional".
4. The company will either agree with the review settings, or may send a revised list of workflows requiring legal review.
5. Once both parties sign off on the settings, the company will be able to start workflows.

If the company has multiple lawyers (for example an IP lawyer and a corporate lawyer), they should register their corporate counsel, as they will be the one to review the documents generated in Shoobx.

Need more information about the Register Counsel workflow? Check out this article.

Available Company Information

Once a company has invited you to their account, you'll see the following information:

• Equity & Financing Panel (Cap Table, Next Round Planner, Exit Scenario Planner, Fundraising, Stock Ledger, Equity Transactions, Employee Equity Report)
• HR Panel (Employee Overview Report, Onboarding Task Report if applicable, Offboarding Task Report if applicable, Org Chart, Employee Compensation Report, Employment Status Report aka the I-9 report, EEO Report, as well the headcount chart)
• Counsel Panel (Involvement Settings, Team Management)
• Data Room
• Directory (User Directory, Companies and Firms)
• Board & Stockholder Panel (lists what board consents and shareholder consents are completed or in progress)
• Company Profile Panel (shows things like common/preferred stock number, board members, officers at a glance)

Simply put, you, the lawyer, have an almost identical view to the "full company access" view that the entrepreneur has.

Running Workflows

Either the lawyer or the entrepreneur can run a workflow. If the entrepreneur runs the workflow, there will be an additional legal review step for all workflows set to "review required." For workflows set to "review optional," the entrepreneur will be presented with the option to add the legal review step.

Legal Review

1. Entrepreneur sends documents to counsel.

If an entrepreneur runs a workflow, they'll eventually get to the "Checkpoint" screen, where they will have the ability to view the documents and make edits as needed. If they think the documents are ready to submit, they'll click continue and Shoobx will (a) send the document to the lawyer automatically if legal review is required, or (b) send the documents to the lawyer if the entrepreneur checks the "Send to counsel" button if legal review is optional.

It is important that the entrepreneur does not send the documents to the lawyer unless they're ready to go out for signature.  If you, the lawyer, approves the documents, they will be sent out for signature (more about that coming up).

2. Lawyer reviews.

The lawyer is presented with the documents. You can either (A) accept the documents and click the button that results in them automatically being sent out for signature, or (B) you can change terms or make textual edits and click the "Request Changes" button to send it back to the entrepreneur so they can incorporate your suggested changes.

The lawyer is also given information about the last time they reviewed this template.  For example, if the lawyer reviewed this exact offer letter template yesterday with another client, Shoobx will remind him/her of that. Keep in mind that simplicity in this process is key - the process works best when only substantive changes are made!

3. If the lawyer "requests changes", the workflow goes back to the entrepreneur.  If the lawyer accepts, it goes out for signature.

When the lawyer reviews the document, they can make edits (which counts as "requesting changes" to the document as written). This goes back to the entrepreneur.  If the lawyer accepts the terms as they are and makes no changes, it goes to the next step in the process (for example the board members might be asked to sign the board consent).

Terminating the Relationship

Both the lawyer and the entrepreneur have the ability to terminate the lawyer-client relationship in Shoobx at any time.  If the entrepreneur stops the relationship, the entrepreneur will have many of their workflows locked (see a few examples of locked workflows here). 

Updating Counsel Settings

As described above, "Counsel Involvement Settings" defines which workflows will require lawyer review and which workflows will have optional lawyer review.  Either the lawyer or the entrepreneur can decide to propose changes for these settings at any time.  However, the changes will not be complete unless the other party agrees to the proposed changes.  For step-by-step instructions on how to change counsel involvement settings, see our article here.

If you have questions, or if we can provide guidance about using our platform, feel free to reach out to support@shoobx.com at any time. We also offer free one-on-one training for lawyers in order to efficiently get you up-to-speed on using the Shoobx platform with your clients. 

Additional Resources:

Register Legal Counsel

Adding Law Firm Team Members