Nothing, at any point. The session, the office hours, the intake route and the materials cost the program and the institution nothing. Founders who choose to engage the firm do so directly, on scope and fees stated in writing before any work begins — the kits at the fee published on each kit page, advisory work scoped in phases. A program that wants to fund legal work for its cohort can, and that is settled at the strategy session; it changes who pays, not who the client is. The one thing that is priced to an institution is a configured layer it asks the firm to build and run — sponsored kits for a cohort, standing counsel capacity, matter reporting — through Enterprise, Portfolio & Custom Support. Nothing on this page requires it.

No. A pilot involves nothing to sign: one cohort, ninety days, a written report at the end. Nothing is exclusive — the pathway sits alongside any firm the program already works with, founders who have their own lawyer keep them, and the pilot measures whether founders use it. A wider configuration across programs, if a program ever wants one, comes with its own written engagement terms.

Ninety minutes, built for the stage the cohort is at: how incorporation and founder shares actually work; what a founders’ agreement and vesting do when a co-founder leaves; getting the IP into the company, including IP that belongs to a university; what a SAFE or a note does to the cap table; what a first investor will ask to see. Questions are welcome and answered as information. Nothing is sold from the front of the room, and no one has to engage the firm to attend.

On a cadence the program sets — monthly is typical — founders book twenty minutes. The aim is to locate the founder’s actual next legal step: a kit, advisory work, or nothing yet. Most leave with the third answer and a date to come back. The conversation is information, not advice; if a founder wants the firm to act, a conflict check and written terms come first, exactly as they would for anyone else.

Not without your written permission, and the firm does not ask programs to endorse it. The pathway summary written for your founders carries your program’s name because it is theirs; nothing public does unless you say so.

Each kit’s fee is published on its own page and confirmed in writing at intake — the founders and startups page sets the kits out in order with their fees, and Fees & Engagement explains how the firm scopes and engages. Advisory work is scoped in phases with a budget agreed before each. HST, government and filing fees are separate. Nothing is charged for a session or for office hours.

Yes, where the program’s model includes it — some programs fund incorporation or a founders’ agreement for every company in a cohort, some fund nothing, and some do it case by case. How billing is settled is agreed at the strategy session and written down. What does not change is who the client is: the firm acts for the founder’s company, takes instructions from it, and keeps its confidences from everyone else, including the program that pays.

No, in either direction. Programs route founders to the firm because the pathway is useful to them, or they do not; nothing is paid for a referral, and the firm does not share fees with a program or an intermediary. See Working with professional advisors for how the firm works with the other people around a founder.

Yes, mostly in when the questions arrive. A spinout can have a licence from the institution, inventors who are still employed by it, grant terms with strings, and a first customer in a regulated sector — before it has a founders’ agreement. The deep-tech stream exists for exactly that: the licence and the assignments read early, the export-control and procurement questions identified before the customer contract, and specialist counsel coordinated where a matter needs it. The principal spent a decade as General Counsel inside aerospace, defence and industrial groups, which is where that judgment comes from — see Institutions and regulated industries.

Yes. A co-founder in the Gulf or the United States, an investor abroad, or a founder who intends to expand there changes the founders’ agreement, the IP assignment and sometimes the corporate structure. The firm is licensed in Canada and the UAE and delivers US-law work through an alliance with a US firm — see Canada–UAE and Canada–US.

Three things, in writing and in aggregate, identifying no founder: uptake across the cohort — how many founders used office hours or the intake route; the questions asked, which tells a program what its cohort needs; and the legal steps completed before first financing — incorporation, founders’ agreement, IP assignment, first instrument. Then a recommendation to continue or stop. If the numbers do not justify continuing, it ends at day ninety and the program has lost nothing.

Then nothing changes for them. The pathway is optional for every founder, the session and office hours are open to all of them regardless, and the firm does not ask anyone to switch. A founder with counsel can still use the materials and the session as a second view of the order things should happen in.

Yes. The same pathway serves a studio building companies or a fund’s platform team supporting a portfolio, and where volume warrants it the configured layer — custom intake, an approved kit menu, escalation rules, coordination across companies and a reporting cadence — is set up through Enterprise, Portfolio & Custom Support after a strategy session.

Request a strategy session and describe the program in a paragraph. The request form is the same one the firm uses for funds and portfolios, so answer what applies and skip the rest; a pilot carries no fee and nothing to sign. After a conflict and fit review, a conversation with the principal names the pilot cohort and shapes the pathway around how the program runs. A pilot can be live within two weeks of that conversation. Submitting a request does not create a lawyer-client relationship or guarantee acceptance.