Publicly traded multi billion dollar corporation in the peer to peer marketplace sector enabling hospitality related services

Publicly-traded, multi-billion dollar corporation in the peer-to-peer marketplace sector enabling hospitality related services. With various mainstay and emerging product offerings across their platform and a growing international presence, the General Counsel was left without a significant member of the legal department when an AGC, Product Counsel gave notice.

The Challenge

The General Counsel of this global online brand, with an immense digital infrastructure and highly innovative C-Suite, was caught off-guard by the departure of a key team member. Just as product lines were being tested for expansion and regulatory hurdles were ahead, the AGC informed the GC of their departure. This AGC led legal’s oversight of platform operations, marketing compliance, and risk mitigation strategies, with emphasis on both day-to-day counsel and strategic planning as well as supporting supply-side operations in partnership with field sales leadership. The GC required an immediate solution or risked creating backlogged work product and delays in regulatory approvals and product launches in critical growth regions.

The Solution

With focus on an expedited process, while ensuring interim counsel profiles possessed practice area expertise and deep experience in navigating multinational regulatory hurdles, MLA Interim partnered with the GC to game plan a one-month process that aligned with the notice period provided by the departing AGC. This would allow for two weeks of MLA Interim and the GC vetting interim counsel profiles and two weeks of transitionary training with the incumbent. The GC also prioritized certain matters that required immediate coverage and organized an effort with their field sales leadership counterpart that ensured regulatory approval requests met their various deadlines. The matters that received immediate prioritization involved transactional efforts centered on host retention tactics in mainstay geographies. MLA Interim committed to the GC that they’d receive profiles for consideration in 3-5 business days, then allowing for another 3-5 business days of interviews and an immediate hire date enabling the two-week training transition period.

The Results

The GC and their field sales leadership counterpart were thrilled to engage a former AMLAW Partner and semi-retired in-house counsel for this critical interim counsel engagement. Meeting the timeline, practice area specialization and multi-national regulatory experience needs, MLA Interim placed this talented interim product counsel allowing for a smooth transition. Following the two-week training period, the interim product counsel took over commercial terms & conditions negotiation for retention related matters and successfully completed a three-country effort to improve their loyalty program and ensure reoccurring revenue interests. As ongoing regulatory matters and pending approvals took shape over the proceeding months, the GC was able to locate an FTE hire to take on permanent Product Counsel responsibilities. The interim counsel then partnered with this new Product Counsel hire to transition matters and departed two-months later with a successful ending to their engagement.