Fractional General Counsel · DLx Law PLLC

Senior legal leadership,
without the
full-time hire.

A senior partner embedded with your team — across contracts, governance, regulatory strategy, product counseling, financing coordination, and outside counsel management. One accountable legal lead for the company.

Led by Irina Marinescu, Partner — former GC, founder, and CEO · Chambers-recognized · DLx Law PLLC

Why DLx

What makes this different.

Founder and operator experience

Irina has served as general counsel, co-founded and led a technology company through acquisition, and built legal and operational infrastructure from the ground up. The advice is calibrated to company decisions and outcomes — what boards, investors, counterparties, and product teams need to move forward.

Chambers-recognized boutique

DLx Law is recognized by Chambers & Partners in FinTech Legal and Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies. Clients receive senior embedded counsel backed by a firm with institutional depth across digital assets, fintech, payments, AI, and financial regulation.

One accountable legal lead

A fractional GC engagement consolidates the legal function under one senior partner — accountable across contracts, governance, regulatory strategy, product counseling, financings, and outside counsel coordination. No managing a directory of disconnected firms.

Services

What a fractional GC engagement covers.

Scope is tailored to each engagement. Irina executes directly on governance, regulatory strategy, commercial contracts, and the specialized work across crypto, AI, and infrastructure. For matters requiring a specialist — priced equity rounds, contested regulatory proceedings, patent prosecution, complex litigation — she identifies, coordinates, and manages appropriate outside counsel.

Embedded GC Retainer

Day-to-day legal partnership for the company. Contracts, governance, board and investor matters, employment and IP foundations, legal operations, and ongoing counsel to founders and executives. Available in Slack, on deal calls, and across the decisions that benefit from legal input.

📋

Regulatory & Product Strategy

Product launch review and regulatory risk mapping: token and stablecoin compliance (GENIUS Act, OCC guidance, CLARITY Act), CFTC/SEC perimeter analysis, payments and money transmission, AI governance (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, agentic systems), and regulatory comment strategy. Active practitioner as federal frameworks take effect.

🏗

Infrastructure & Finance Architecture

Legal architecture for companies at the intersection of physical and financial infrastructure: compute and data center agreements, hyperscaler and hosting arrangements, power procurement, miner-to-HPC transitions, UCC Article 8/9 collateral frameworks, warehouse facilities, and asset-backed and structured finance transactions.

🧭

Outside Counsel Coordination

For matters requiring specialist depth — priced equity rounds, securities enforcement, patent prosecution, state MTL applications, FERC proceedings, tax, litigation, international structuring — DLx identifies, engages, and manages appropriate counsel from an existing network calibrated to each matter type.

Common situations

When founders reach out.

"We're not ready for a full-time GC, but legal is now on the critical path."
The work calls for someone who can own legal priorities, triage risk, and coordinate counsel — while keeping the company moving. A fractional engagement provides that — calibrated to your stage and legal complexity.
"We have outside counsel relationships but no one managing the full picture."
A fractional GC determines what to handle directly, what requires specialist counsel, and where the company is over-lawyering. One lead accountable for the whole legal function.
"We're entering a regulated market or opening enterprise sales."
Commercial agreements, product review, compliance posture, governance, and diligence materials that hold up to scrutiny from customers, investors, banks, and regulators — built before you need them.
"We need a legal operator, not just a lawyer."
Someone who understands how legal decisions interact with product, fundraising, sales, partnerships, and company-building — and gives advice calibrated to that reality.
Fit

Who this is designed for.

Seed through growth-stage companies that need one accountable legal lead before a full-time in-house hire is the right step. Particularly well-suited for companies operating across digital assets, fintech, AI, and compute infrastructure — domains where legal questions evolve faster than standard playbooks.

Venture-backed technology companies

Companies that have outgrown purely reactive outside counsel and need a senior partner to own the legal function — across contracts, governance, financing, and regulatory matters — as they scale.

Digital asset protocols & token companies

Token launches, CLARITY Act classification, entity and governance architecture for protocols and foundations, treasury management policies, contributor frameworks, and regulatory strategy for blockchain-based products and infrastructure.

Fintech, payments & stablecoin companies

Money transmission, bank partnerships, stablecoin product structuring, reserve and redemption mechanics, AML/KYC/OFAC programs, licensing strategy, and compliance program development.

AI, compute & infrastructure developers

AI governance frameworks (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, agentic systems), data center and HPC transactions, power procurement, compute vendor agreements, and the AI-specific commercial terms — acceptable use, output warranties, training data restrictions, model drift obligations — appearing across enterprise AI contracts.

Process

How an engagement works.

01

Initial conflicts clearance and scoping

A brief conversation to understand your company, legal needs, and scope. Following conflicts clearance, we agree on engagement structure.

02

Defined engagement structure

Engagements are structured to fit the company — typically a monthly retainer covering a defined scope, with clear provisions for work outside that scope. Flat-fee structures available for defined projects.

03

Embedded legal partnership

Irina joins your Slack, attends key meetings where useful, reviews and drafts contracts, advises on regulatory questions, and serves as primary legal contact for your team and counterparties.

04

Outside counsel coordination

Where matters require specialist depth — priced equity rounds, FERC proceedings, patent prosecution, state MTL applications, securities enforcement defense — DLx identifies, engages, and manages the right outside counsel. One point of accountability across the full legal function.

Led by
Irina Marinescu
Partner, DLx Law PLLC · New York · Illinois · Washington, D.C.

Irina's practice sits at the juncture of finance, crypto, and legal vectors concerning AI deployments — a combination that maps directly to what companies building across these markets encounter in practice.

Her finance background spans structured finance and capital markets at AmLaw 100 firms and Barclays Capital, including through the 2008–2009 credit crisis. She later served as the sole legal hire at Gitcoin, a Paradigm-backed public goods protocol, where she authored governance frameworks that preceded subsequently aligned industry standards. She subsequently co-founded buidlbox, a developer platform acquired by HackQuest.

She publishes practitioner-grade legal analysis at Code & Counsel on Substack, has filed regulatory comment letters before the OCC on behalf of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, and advises on agentic AI legal frameworks through the Advanced AI Society. Admitted in New York, Illinois, and the District of Columbia.

Protocol governance Token regulation Agentic AI law Structured finance AI infrastructure GENIUS Act / stablecoins Operator background Code & Counsel (Substack)
Get started

The right fit is specific. Let's find out if this is it.

Send a brief note — company, stage, and the legal terrain you're navigating. We'll assess fit and follow up.

Schedule a call →

Or email  irina@dlxlaw.com

This service is provided through DLx Law PLLC. Contacting us does not establish an attorney-client relationship. Please do not include privileged information in initial correspondence. Attorney advertising.