Most fast-growing companies reach a point where legal becomes a queue. Every contract, hire, and policy question waits on outside counsel, and every wait gets billed. HeyReach, a fast-growing sales outreach platform with companies spanning the EU and the US, took a different path. Since summer 2024, Milo (and from Feb 2025, Fellow) has acted as its ongoing general counsel across commercial, corporate, and employment work. Along the way, we built legal infrastructure inside Slack that lets people across HeyReach trigger signatures on documents our firm has already verified, so routine deals close fast without waiting on a lawyer.
"Fellow is our first call for anything legal, and they have turned a lot of it into something our team can handle without a call at all. They know our business, they tell us where the real risk is, and they help us move fast everywhere else."
Nick Velkovski, Founder and CEO
The situation
HeyReach grew quickly, and its legal needs grew with it. What started as individual matters became a steady flow across the whole business, commercial agreements, corporate housekeeping, hiring and employment questions, and day-to-day advice on whatever came up next. Today that means dozens of matters a month, increasing in both volume and pace.
HeyReach also runs as a group of companies across the EU and the US. That means many questions touch more than one legal system at once, from how a contract should be structured to where a new hire sits and which rules apply to them.
The team needed more than a firm to send documents to. They needed someone in their corner on any issue, who understood the business on both sides of the Atlantic well enough to give advice that kept it moving.
The challenge
A general counsel role means no two weeks look alike. One day it is a customer agreement, the next an employment question or a corporate approval, and each one needs an answer that fits the business, not a textbook.
The traditional model makes this expensive. Every request goes through a lawyer, every lawyer's hour gets billed, and the company learns to avoid asking. For a team moving at HeyReach's pace, that friction costs more than the invoices do.
The cross-border setup adds another layer. Most firms are strong on one side of the Atlantic. A group spanning the EU and the US either finds counsel comfortable on both, or ends up coordinating two firms and paying for every hand-off between them.
And the most common requests were often the simplest. A standard document needed a signature so a deal could close, and the only thing standing in the way was waiting for a lawyer to say yes.
What we did
Fellow took on the general counsel role as one continuous relationship rather than a string of separate matters, and then built systems so the team did not need to wait on us for the routine work.
Ongoing general counsel
We act as HeyReach's outsourced GC, handling matters as they come up and advising the team whenever a question needs judgment. No matter the issue, the team has one place to go.
Signatures triggered from Slack
We built legal infrastructure that lets people across HeyReach trigger signatures on a range of documents directly in Slack. Every one of those documents has already been verified by our firm, so when a team member sends it out, they know it is approved paper. Deals close fast, and the team does not have to wait for a lawyer to sign off on something we have already reviewed. A traditional firm would bill time for each of those requests. We built the system once, so the routine moves on its own and our lawyers step in only when something falls outside the approved documents.
One counsel across the EU and the US
Our team works across both the US and Europe, so HeyReach gets one point of contact for the whole group instead of coordinating separate firms. Questions that cross borders get one answer that accounts for both sides.
Risk-based advice
Our advice is built around risk. We focus on what could create outsized exposure and help the team move quickly on everything else, so legal speeds the business up instead of slowing it down.
Corporate and employment
We keep the corporate records and the people side of the group in order as the team grows, from approvals and housekeeping to hiring and employment questions across both regions.
How we work together
Most of the work happens in Slack, where the HeyReach team already spends its day. Questions get asked in the channel and answered there, with no portal to log into and no ticket queue. That keeps the turnaround short and makes it easy to ask the small questions before they turn into big ones.
The relationship works because it is continuous. We know the business, the team, and the risks that matter, so advice comes back fast and fits the situation. When there is a better path, we say so and explain why, and HeyReach makes the call with the full picture. Being in their corner means being available on the small questions as well as the big ones.
The result
HeyReach has a legal function that scales with the company. People across the business trigger signatures on firm-verified documents straight from Slack, so routine deals close without waiting on a lawyer. The group has one counsel across the EU and the US, and Fellow stays focused on the judgment calls and the issues that carry real exposure. The work has grown to dozens of matters a month, and keeps growing in volume and pace, without a billable hour attached to every request.
