An open corporate and securities role, a proxy statement deadline that wouldn’t move, and an experienced lawyer in place within one week.
At a Glance
- Company: Fortune 100 consumer company
- Team: In-house legal department with an open corporate and securities role
- The work: Proxy statement filing period, supporting the assistant corporate secretary
- Engagement: One experienced corporate and securities lawyer, placed within one week
- Outcome: Filing deadlines met without overburdening the internal team, and time bought to run a full permanent hiring process
The Coverage Gap
A Fortune 100 consumer company was heading into a proxy statement filing period with an open corporate and securities role it hadn’t yet filled. The calendar didn’t care. Proxy deadlines are fixed, public, and unforgiving, and the work leading up to them is specialized enough that it can’t simply be redistributed to whoever has capacity.
Internal resources were already stretched thin. Every week the role stayed open, more of that filing work landed on people who were carrying full plates of their own, and the risk of missing a key deadline moved from theoretical to real.
Why the Usual Options Didn’t Fit
The team needed experienced corporate and securities coverage, and it needed it in days. Not in the timeline a normal hiring process runs on.
- Wait for the permanent hire. A corporate and securities search takes months to run properly. The filing period wouldn’t wait for it, and rushing the search to beat the deadline meant risking the wrong long-term hire.
- Absorb it internally. The team was already stretched. Pushing a filing period onto people at capacity trades a deadline risk for a burnout risk, and doesn’t remove the deadline risk entirely.
- Send it to a firm. Bringing outside counsel into a discrete, deadline-driven support role means paying premium rates and spending scarce internal time on ramp-up during the exact weeks when nobody has time to spare.
What the company needed wasn’t more of any one option. It was experienced coverage that could start almost immediately, work alongside the existing team, and end when the permanent hire arrived.
Experienced Coverage, In Seat Within a Week
Priori matched the company with an experienced corporate and securities lawyer who could step in within one week and support the assistant corporate secretary through the filing process.
Because the match was made on substantive corporate and securities experience rather than general availability, there was no long ramp. The lawyer could take on real filing work from the start instead of being supervised through it, which matters most in exactly the situation where the internal team has the least time to supervise anyone.
Deadlines Met, Pressure Off
The company met its filing deadlines. It did so without pushing the overflow onto team members who were already at capacity, and without compressing a permanent search into a timeline that would have produced a worse long-term hire.
That single engagement yielded two benefits. First, it solved the immediate coverage challenge: the filing was completed on schedule by a qualified professional. Second, it created breathing room. With the immediate deadline secured, the company was able to conduct a thoughtful search for its permanent corporate and securities role rather than settling for an available candidate under time pressure.
Facing a similar gap?
If a filing period, a leave, or an open role is colliding with a deadline your team can’t move, flexible coverage may close the gap faster than either hiring or absorbing it.
