Tipalti
When a lawyer went on leave, Tipalti needed someone who could hit the ground running without the cost or ramp-up of a traditional firm. Two years later, that first fractional hire is still part of the team — and a second engagement followed the same playbook.
Tipalti is a fintech unicorn — an AI-powered finance automation platform that helps companies pay suppliers, vendors, partners, and creators in over 200 countries and 120 currencies. Founded in 2010, it helps finance teams scale without the manual complexity of doing business worldwide.
You can bring in an experienced in-house leader who understands what the business wants, understands how the business talks, at a fraction of the cost, and is able to hit the ground running. It's a no-brainer.
Alice Davidson runs a lean team covering commercial legal, product and regulatory counseling, privacy, data security, employment, corporate governance, litigation, and licensing — in her words, “a little bit of everything.”
When one of her lawyers went on parental leave, hiring a full-time replacement didn't make sense for a time-bound gap. A traditional law firm wasn't a real option either: cost-prohibitive for the engagement, and without the in-house pragmatism the role needed.
The process itself was fast. Alice described the gap in a single meeting — she wanted someone with fintech experience — and had a pool of three or four candidate CVs within days. She met with all of them and made the call on fit.
The lawyer she chose started day one with a company laptop, email, and full systems access already set up. She joined meetings immediately and picked up the business quickly enough that, two years later, she's still one of Tipalti's two fractional counsel.
When the next gap came up, going back to Goodlawyer was, in Alice's words, a no-brainer. She got another roster of candidates and knew right away who would fit. Tipalti recently re-engaged this lawyer again. It only took one email.
Our first Goodlawyer, who we continue to work with two years later, literally walked in on day one — joining meetings, reading the materials, and understanding quite quickly what it was we were doing.
Two years on, both fractional counsel are still part of how Alice runs her legal function. She's rethought what “professional services budget” even means: it used to be shorthand for traditional law firm spend, but now it covers both — and she doesn't allocate it dollar-for-dollar. Her Goodlawyer dollars, in her words, go a lot further.
We run lean in-house and we run really lean externally. But to me, it’s now just part of my legal flex — my external bench.
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