How We Work

Food manufacturing is a special industry that deserves its own special relationship with legal counsel. That relationship rests on three foundational pillars: comprehensive expertise in regulatory and commercial food-industry law; predictable billing that enables deep integration; and a temperament that invites every team member to seek the advice of counsel.

There are two ways to engage The Food Law Firm, and this page helps you pick the one that fits how your business actually runs.

Most food and beverage businesses self-sort along one line: how often legal questions come up.

• Fractional General Counsel subscription — a flat monthly fee for an embedded, on-call counsel relationship. Best when legal is continuous: recurring contracts, label cadence, compliance monitoring, and team-wide access. See Service Plans →
• Traditional flat-fee & hourly billing — a firm quote after a complimentary consultation, with a 2–3 day turnaround on routine matters. Best for a single, scoped need. See Traditional Billing →

A quick revenue-band rule of thumb: if your business is under roughly $5M in annual revenue with occasional, project-based legal needs, Traditional Billing usually fits. If you are $10M+ with recurring legal work, a Service Plan typically pays for itself — the subscription costs less than the unbudgeted hourly variance it replaces.

A good general counsel for a food business needs to be two-thirds industry specialist and one-third business-law generalist. One third of the specialist expertise requires command of FDA, USDA, and TTB regulation, plus the oddball laws that affect manufacturing and labeling like California’s Proposition 65 — covering labeling and claims, food-safety compliance, and recall readiness. Another third requires mastery of the commercial deals that move food up and down the supply chain: co-packer and private-label agreements, broker and distributor agreements, and product-development agreements. The final third is the sturdy general-practice work every business needs — trademark management and docketing, employment matters, and the daily churn of service, vendor, and customer contracts. With a balanced stack like this, a general counsel can address about 95 percent of the legal issues a food manufacturer will face before going public.

The billable hour cannot practically deliver the integrated, comprehensive service a food manufacturer requires. Services that must embed across operations stall when every conversation is metered, and management will not unleash staff to consult counsel when the monthly cost is a moving target. A general counsel model must be coupled with a flat-fee structure that is both equitable for the attorney and predictable for the business. A fixed monthly legal line item unlocks early contact across departments and becomes a CEO-level tool placed at the team’s disposal — so decisions consistently reflect the company’s best interests. If you want to work the numbers, our budgeting for legal counsel page benchmarks legal spend against industry data.

One of the most important aspects of a general counsel for a food business is also the most intangible: temperament matters a lot. Legal skills and fee structure are meaningless unless people actually want to use counsel as a daily resource. Good food-law counsel speaks “manufacturer.” Advice aligns with industry norms and operational practice; contracts are written in language a plant manager can apply on the production floor; and it all flows at the speed of commerce. Production and sales drive the company — counsel’s job is to facilitate commerce, never to obstruct it.

If you are weighing the two models, a free consultation is the fastest way to decide. We will tell you candidly whether a scoped flat-fee engagement or a subscription is the better economic fit for your revenue and legal cadence. Schedule a free meeting →

The Food Law Firm — Foscolo & Diefenbach PLLC. Premier law firm for food & beverage businesses since 2011. Last reviewed: June 2026.