About the firm.

Philosophy

Legal problems are cheapest before they exist. The contract clause that would have prevented the dispute costs a fraction of the dispute. The corporate record that would have survived diligence costs a fraction of the broken deal. Prevention is not glamorous work, which is why almost nobody sells it.

The billable hour is the reason. Under the hour, prevention is unbilled and crisis is lucrative, so the industry organizes itself around crisis. This is not a criticism of the lawyers who work that way; it is a description of the incentive they work under. Retained charges a flat fee precisely so that the firm profits most when the client has the fewest problems.

What a growing company needs is not a lawyer to call. It is a legal department: a function inside the business, working on a calendar, accountable for the whole legal surface, present before anything goes wrong. Retained exists to be that department for companies not yet ready to build their own.

The Founder

Nathan Finch started this firm on a simple observation: most midsize companies need the judgment of a general counsel far more often than they need one on payroll.

Nathan is a licensed Arizona attorney whose practice covers the full range of problems a growing company actually faces: corporate governance, contracts, employment, licensing, intellectual property, and litigation. He has served as outside general counsel to lenders and operating companies, as counsel to Chapter 11 trustees, and has taken matters through trial and appeal.

Just as important, he has run businesses rather than merely advising them. He served as chief operating officer and senior legal executive of a mechanical contracting company, guiding it through a successful sale to its employees, and he remains a partner in a real estate investment and development firm. He has given the advice and then had to live with it, and that shapes how he counsels clients: practically, decisively, and with an eye on the business outcome rather than the billable hour.

Where Retained Practices

Retained is an Arizona practice. Multi-state support is coordinated where needed.