The Original Startup Lawyers

Since 2012, General Standards has led as pioneer in affordable legal services for startups. We focus on being lawyers – while we don’t pretend we’re a tech startup ourselves, we’re definitely business people. We’re small, smart and efficient. We do things differently. We sometimes rattle a few cages. We’re very human, and help other humans achieve their startup ambitions.

We’re based on Chapel Street in Melbourne, Australia. We also run a 185-desk coworking space Revolver Lane, which is conveniently situated under Australia’s most infamous nightclub – and our office is on top of that. In 2014 we opened firms in New York and London and cofounded an Australia accounting firm. We sold out of London and the accounting firm in 2019.

After nearly 10 years and tens-of-thousands of legal documents, we have developed a clever booking system that lets our clients put them time in our calendar that we need to do their work. This reduces the time taken to schedule jobs, as well as giving clients complete transparency over price and timing. As far as we can tell, we’re the first law firm in the world to take this approach to work. Given that our website has been copied now less than 5 times since 2012, we can’t imagine we’ll be last.

We offer our services in three tiers:

Standard – this is our normal service offering, perfect for 95% of our clients, with affordable fixed-fees and convenient online scheduling.

Retainer – higher-volume clients can benefit from capped-pricing (where we do work at our hourly rates, capped at the fixed-price), discounted hourly rates, fortnightly billing and a priority scheduler that allows clients to book the “next available” work window. These benefits are charged at $110 per month.

Private – our longest-standing clients, with the highest-growth business, for whom we make exceptions to otherwise steadfast rules.

At the heart of it all is our commitment to being lawyers. We service startups that want a lawyer. We don’t do DIY. We never cut corners. When we make mistakes we fix them. When our clients stop taking our advice, we stop giving it. As a firm we do hundreds of small legal jobs every month. We’re always busy.

Our small size is the key to our efficiency. However this means the way we work is structured. We don’t take unscheduled calls. We force bookings through our online scheduler. We have fixed turnarounds. Sometimes this can be frustrate clients. However it is the way we have to work in order to offer our expertise affordably to early stage startups. By the time a venture gets large enough to be a very demanding legal client, we may no longer be the right firm. We’re OK with that. We measure our success not by the fees we bill, but the number of startups we help start.

General Standards knows startups… and startups know General Standards.