Most prospective clients have been burned by consultants who took retainers and disappeared, or who quoted scope and then expanded it. The practice is intentional about the engagement workflow because the workflow is the differentiator. Below is exactly how engagements are scoped, priced, and run.
A confidential conversation about the matter, the timeline, and the regulatory environment. The practice will assess fit honestly — including telling you when the matter is better handled by counsel, by a different consultant, or in-house. Roughly one in three initial conversations end here.
If the conversation produces a viable engagement, the practice issues a written scoping memo. The memo defines the work, the deliverables, the timeline, the assumptions, and the regulatory dependencies. It is the document the engagement is built on.
Fees are proposed as a fixed-fee project, a monthly retainer, or a combination. Hourly billing is rare and reserved for matters where scope is genuinely uncertain. The proposal includes pass-through costs (filing fees, third-party studies) at cost. There are no hidden line items, no kickbacks from contractors or vendors, and no markups on third-party services.
A short, plain-English engagement letter — typically two to three pages — confirming scope, fees, deliverables, and termination terms. The practice does not require long-term retainers; clients can terminate any retainer engagement on 30 days’ written notice without cause.
Most engagements run on a weekly cadence: a 30-minute working call, a written status update, and a tracked deliverable list. Larger or multi-jurisdiction engagements move to a bi-weekly cadence with a monthly portfolio review. Communication outside the cadence is direct to the principal — not a junior associate, not a project coordinator.
Project engagements close with a written closeout memo summarizing what was delivered, what regulatory or operational obligations remain on the client side, and what the practice recommends as a follow-on cadence. Retainer engagements transition to lower-cadence advisory if the operational work is mature, or end cleanly with a closeout memo if no longer needed.
Selectivity is more credible stated as a floor than as a ceiling. The practice declines the following matter types as a matter of policy: