How an engagement runs.
Every engagement runs through the same four stages, whether the matter is a single contract review or a multi-phase M&A transaction. You always know what comes next; the firm always knows what to deliver.
Intake
Sixty minutes, paid, substantive.
The intake is the session where the situation gets walked through start to finish, the legal issues get identified, the strategy gets set, and the questions you arrived with get answered. This is not a sales call and not a free consultation. The intake is substantive legal work, and the time inside it produces a written summary of the analysis and the recommended path that you keep regardless of whether the engagement continues.
It is calendared after the firm has read the matter description you send through the contact form and produced a preliminary written evaluation. Delina arrives at the call prepared, with a point of view rather than a list of preliminary questions.
Legal Roadmap
A written plan, not a template.
A written plan calibrated to your entity, your income mix, the contracts in motion, and your actual risk exposure. The roadmap addresses each issue surfaced in the intake, recommends the engagement type or types that fit, names the deliverables each one produces, and ties the work to a specific timeline. Where the matter combines multiple service types, it explains the phasing and the decision points along the way.
The roadmap is the firm’s analysis of your specific situation, in writing, and it informs the engagement letter that follows.
Execution
Drafted, reviewed, and signed by Delina.
Drafting, structuring, filing, and review. Formation documents, operating agreements, contracts, tax memoranda, trademark applications, M&A documentation, prenuptial and postnuptial agreements, and the rest of what the engagement covers. Fees are committed in writing in the engagement letter before drafting begins, flat per scope for most matters and hourly for M&A and certain others.
The engagement covers one consolidated round of revisions on most matters and two on M&A. If the counterparty negotiates after the first round on a contract matter, additional rounds run under the same engagement up to the revisions allotted in the Statement of Work, and beyond that are scoped per round.
Every deliverable is reviewed under a structured Review Checklist before it leaves the firm. That checklist is the internal quality-control framework, and it is the reason every contract, memorandum, and filing meets the same standard regardless of which engagement type produced it.
Continuing Counsel
One firm across the next decade.
Questions do not stop after the deliverable lands. Retained clients keep continuing access to the firm for the matters that come up after the initial engagement closes, the right structure for anyone running an active enterprise with regular legal questions.
Most clients came in for one matter and stayed for the next decade, and the reason is structural. Each new engagement begins with the firm already knowing the contracts in motion, the IP in the portfolio, the entity structure in place, and the personal arrangements connected to the business. The intake on the second engagement is not the intake on the first. By the third, the firm functions as your outside general counsel without your having to ask for that role.
Continuing Counsel can run as a retained relationship with monthly or quarterly capacity, an annual package for creators and operators with predictable volume, or ad hoc engagements scoped per matter, calibrated to your actual demand.
What it covers.
Every engagement letter, committed to before drafting begins, sets out the scope, the deliverables, the timeline, the fee structure (flat per scope for most matters, hourly for M&A and certain others), the consolidated rounds of revisions allotted, the payment terms, the confidentiality and conflicts framework, the AI Use Disclosure, and the termination and transition provisions the professional-responsibility rules require.
Flat-scope fees are earned on receipt under the Master Engagement Agreement, with your right to a refund of any unearned portion based on the reasonable value of services performed. Full detail at Fees.
How to begin.
Engagements begin with a description of the matter sent through the contact form. The firm responds within one business day with a written proposal and a preliminary evaluation, both at no charge.
If the matter is a fit and proceeds, the next step is the paid 60-minute intake, calendared from there. Reach the firm at delina@delina.esq or 818-888-6060.
Ready to begin?
Send a description of what’s in front of you. The firm responds within one business day with a written proposal and a preliminary read. The first email is at no charge.
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