What we do
- Monthly retainer with included hours for ongoing matters
- Single point of contact for contracts, employment, and commercial questions
- Tax-aware advice on every commercial decision — no separate accountant translation step
- Board minutes, shareholder resolutions, and ongoing corporate maintenance
- Coordination with specialist counsel when a matter falls outside scope
- Predictable monthly cost; escalation pricing only for litigation or transactional work outside the retainer
What "Fractional General Counsel" actually means. Large companies hire an in-house General Counsel — a senior lawyer on the payroll who reviews every contract, attends board meetings, manages outside counsel, and keeps the business out of trouble. Most Canadian small and mid-sized businesses can't justify that overhead. A Fractional General Counsel gives you the same on-call relationship as a monthly subscription instead of a full-time salary.
What's included in a Fractional GC retainer
- Unlimited short calls and emails for the kind of question that takes a phone call and ten minutes of lawyer time — "Can I terminate this employee under their contract?", "Does this supplier's clause about indirect damages apply to us?", "We just got a Notice of Reassessment — what now?"
- Contract review and negotiation on customer agreements, supplier contracts, NDAs, employment offers, independent-contractor agreements, and licensing arrangements within the monthly hours.
- Corporate maintenance — annual returns, board and shareholder minutes, share-register updates, and the housekeeping required to keep your CBCA/OBCA filings clean.
- Quarterly check-ins on tax, employment, regulatory, and corporate developments that affect your industry.
- Triage and referral when something genuinely falls outside our scope — IP litigation, immigration, real-estate conveyancing — to a specialist we trust, with the relationship already warm.
Why this works better than ad-hoc hourly counsel
The single biggest cost of using a lawyer hour-by-hour isn't the bill — it's the friction. Every call starts with re-explaining your business, your structure, and your problem from scratch. With a Fractional GC, your lawyer already knows your shareholder agreement, your share structure, your key supplier contracts, and where the bodies are buried. Decisions happen in minutes, not weeks.
Because Barrett Tax Law's bench is tax-first, you also get something a pure corporate-commercial GC can't offer: every contract is reviewed through a tax lens before it's signed. The wrong indemnity clause, the wrong residency assumption, the wrong choice between asset-sale and share-sale — these are the differences that show up two years later as a six-figure CRA reassessment.
Who this is for
- Founder-led businesses from roughly $2M to $50M in revenue — too large for ad-hoc legal help, too small to staff a full GC.
- Owner-managed corporations with multi-class shares, family trusts, or holding-company structures that need ongoing maintenance.
- Professional corporations (medical, dental, accounting, engineering) where regulatory + tax overlap and you need one lawyer who understands both.
- Family enterprises approaching a transition — succession planning, estate freeze, sibling buyouts — where ongoing legal continuity matters as much as the one-time deal.
How retainers are structured
Each engagement is quoted after a free scoping call so the monthly fee actually matches the volume of work you expect. Most retainers include a pool of hours per month that roll forward for one quarter; matters that exceed the pool are quoted on a fixed-fee basis or billed at our retainer hourly rate. There's no lock-in beyond a 60-day notice period.
Book a free consultation and we'll scope what your business actually needs.
Working with us
Every engagement begins with a tax-aware review of your goals. We pair the corporate work — incorporations, agreements, transactions — with the tax planning that lets the structure deliver value over the long term. Your consultation is confidential, and once we are retained, communications are protected by solicitor–client privilege.
We work on fixed-fee quotes for most corporate matters so you know the cost up front.
Frequently asked questions
Why use a tax lawyer for a corporate matter instead of a corporate lawyer?
Most incorporations, sales, and reorganizations have tax consequences worth more than the legal fees. A tax-aware lawyer drafts the share structure, the rollover, and the agreement with the after-tax outcome in mind — not just the corporate-law mechanics.
Do you work with my existing accountant?
Yes — most corporate engagements involve close coordination with the client's accountant for valuation, rollovers, T2057 filings, and post-closing compliance. We treat your accountant as part of the team.
How are corporate engagements priced?
Most matters — incorporations, shareholder agreements, share sales, simple reorganizations — are quoted on a fixed-fee basis after we understand scope. Complex transactions and litigation are typically billed hourly with a budget cap.