Success story with
"What I love about UpCounsel is that they have provided big firm lawyers with big firm expertise, at much more reasonable rates. They help me to fill important gaps where larger firms often can’t compete on pricing. I have a rate set for various types of work/attorneys, and I know what I am getting …. quality legal work. And it helps me breathe easier and helps me manage my own busy schedule and workload."
Scott Woods
SVP & General Counsel at Charming Charlie
Charming Charlie, founded in 2004, is a fashion retailer that sells women's apparel and accessories, including jewelry, sunglasses, scarves, purses, wallets, clothes, shoes, and other items. Charming Charlie has more than 200 stores across the United States and counting.
How does Charming Charlie benefit by working with UpCounsel?
With UpCounsel, Scott has not only been able to work with talented attorneys, but do it in a way that allows Charming Charlie to sustainably scale their business and in-house legal department.
The UpCounsel platform makes it easy for Scott to manage his projects, handle his payments, exchange documents, and hire new attorneys – it’s simple, flexible, and cost-effective.
Now, when any new legal issue finds its way onto Scott’s desk, he and his team simply post a job on UpCounsel and immediately have on-demand access to UpCounsel’s attorney network for them to choose the right lawyer that matches both their needs and budget.
The challenge
Over the last decade, Charming Charlie has built itself quite an impressive empire in the hyper-competitive retail world. Founded in Texas, Charming Charlie now has expanded across the country, and has plans in the works to take their popular stores international.
However, as an expanding company that’s looking to accelerate growth, a variety of legal headaches can arise; and more often than not, they come about unexpectedly. That’s why Charming Charlie’s General Counsel, Scott Woods, needs a fast and effective way to get high-quality lawyers on-demand.
Scott is Charming Charlie’s first General Counsel and, in addition to handling their day-to-day legal work, he has been tasked with the responsibility to build their legal department from the ground up. He specifically needs to be able to address legal issues that usually require less diligence and back-and-forth between parties, yet can take countless hours to procure a competent attorney to review. Scott needed a smart solution for Charming Charlie – one that could also be nimble enough for him during this crucial phase.
The solution
Scott’s legal needs were varied–general HR, advertising, IP, contract review–yet, they equally required a specialist to handle. He wanted to avoid utilizing massive law firms and other traditional methods to source talent, the time and cost it would take was just something he couldn’t afford to spend.
Therefore, when Scott was faced with having to deal with a commercial contract lease in February 2015, he decided to go ahead and post his job on UpCounsel. He took a few minutes to describe his legal needs on the site, and within hours began receiving custom proposals from experienced attorneys about how to address his issues with an outline of what it would cost.
After reviewing his options, Scott decided to go with Jann Moorhead, a global transactional attorney with over 25 years of experience representing multinational corporations as well as startups at every stage.
With expansion comes a plethora of employment-related matters. Fortunately for Scott, he was able find Nicolle Muehr on UpCounsel who has been representing companies in employment and labor law issues in Texas and throughout the country.
And to handle Charming Charlie’s IP work, Scott has been able to rely on Liz Oliner, who has helped hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs navigate through the complex waters of intellectual property law.