Why we built a desk instead of a law firm

The people who run Engross have spent more than a decade doing commercial and licensing work for technology companies across forty-odd jurisdictions, a great many of them selling into or out of the United States. The recurring scene is the same everywhere: a US software company of sixty people, a customer’s MSA in the inbox, a founder or a head of sales reading it at eleven at night, and a lawyer somewhere who would review it — for an hourly fee, in a week, with a memo that lists the problems and leaves the negotiation to the founder.

Software has since arrived to make the memo faster. That is genuinely useful. It does not change the scene. Somebody still has to get on the call with the other side’s counsel, trade the liability cap for the renewal term, and carry the document to a signature. That part is a lawyer’s job, and it is the part nobody had packaged.

What a desk is

A fixed monthly fee. Unlimited routine commercial contracts. Reviewed, redlined and negotiated to signature by a law firm, with a production team behind it that makes the first pass fast and the tenth contract of the month as unremarkable as the first. US law by attorneys admitted in New York; everything outside the US by lawyers qualified where the question arises.

What it is not

It is not a law firm that does everything. Litigation, financings and acquisitions are separate engagements, with a separate price. It is not a software product; there is no dashboard to learn. And it is not a place where a contract goes to a model and comes back with a warning label. Every position that reaches a counterparty has been through a lawyer who is responsible for it.

Why flat

Because hourly billing changes behaviour. When each question costs money, people stop asking, and the contracts that most need a second look are the ones that do not get it. A flat fee inverts the incentive: the more a client sends, the better we understand their business and the faster the work gets. We would rather be paid to close deals quickly than to spend time on them.

That is the whole idea. The rest of this site is the detail.