Structured for early consultation and preventive compliance, not reactive hourly billing.

Securities compliance is fundamentally preventive work. The value of counsel is highest before problems materialize, during the drafting of disclosures, the structuring of transactions, the evaluation of regulatory risk, and the early identification of disclosure gaps that could trigger SEC comment letters, enforcement referrals, or worse. In every other area of business, companies invest in prevention because the cost of remediation is orders of magnitude higher. Securities law should be no different, but hourly billing makes it so.

Hourly billing creates a perverse dynamic in securities compliance that is particularly harmful for issuers in emerging industries. When a cannabis company CFO has a question about whether a particular revenue recognition approach needs to be disclosed differently given the federal illegality of the company's operations, the last thing that should enter the decision to call securities counsel is the cost of the phone call. When an AI company's board is evaluating whether their technology capability claims in marketing materials are consistent with their SEC disclosure, the analysis should happen immediately, not after a cost-benefit calculation about legal fees.

The cost of a disclosure deficiency discovered during the drafting process is measured in hours of revision and analysis. The cost of the same deficiency discovered in an SEC comment letter is measured in weeks of response preparation, potential filing amendments, and market uncertainty. The cost of that deficiency discovered in an enforcement investigation is measured in years of legal proceedings and potentially millions of dollars in penalties, disgorgement, officer and director bars, and irreversible reputational damage.

Flat fees solve these problems structurally. They make securities counsel accessible throughout the compliance cycle without financial hesitation. They allow the firm to invest time in understanding the client's business, industry dynamics, competitive landscape, and regulatory risk profile rather than tracking increments of attention. They create an economic alignment between the firm's interest and the client's regulatory interest: accurate, complete, defensible disclosure that satisfies SEC requirements and anticipates enforcement scrutiny.

For issuers in cannabis, AI, cryptocurrency, luxury technology, and other regulated sectors where the disclosure challenges are more complex and the SEC's attention is more focused, the flat-fee model is not just more economical. It produces better compliance outcomes because it removes the single largest barrier to early consultation: the uncertainty of cost.