For companies building across digital assets, AI, and compute infrastructure — a fractional GC engagement means a senior counsel who is present in your Slack, on your deal calls, and across your regulatory and commercial decisions. Not a law firm that bills by the matter. An embedded legal partner who owns the function.
Offered through DLx Law PLLC · Led by Irina Marinescu, Partner
Scope is tailored to each engagement and built around your actual legal terrain — not a generic GC checklist. Irina executes directly on governance, regulatory strategy, commercial contracts, and the specialized crypto × AI × infrastructure work that defines each client's stack. For matters requiring a specialist — priced equity rounds, contested regulatory proceedings, patent prosecution, complex litigation — she sources, coordinates, and manages appropriate outside counsel. One point of accountability, not a rotating cast of outside firms.
Token classification, stablecoin compliance (GENIUS Act, OCC guidance), CFTC/SEC perimeter analysis, regulatory comment strategy, product launch review, and ongoing regulatory risk management across digital assets, AI governance, and payments. Active practitioner in CLARITY Act and GENIUS Act implementation as those frameworks take effect.
MSAs, enterprise and SaaS agreements, data licenses, API terms, developer agreements, and commercial infrastructure across institutional and protocol-facing relationships.
Entity formation and selection, multi-entity international structuring (protocol foundation, operating entity, token company), governance design and documentation, open-source ecosystem frameworks, and board-level corporate governance — including for organizations operating across both traditional legal structures and on-chain protocols.
SAFE and seed-stage documentation executed directly. For priced equity rounds, token sales, and structured debt facilities — Irina serves as the embedded GC coordinating specialized financing counsel, managing diligence, and ensuring legal infrastructure is investor-grade before any process opens. Structured finance background (UCC Article 8/9, warehouse facilities, asset-backed transactions) informs both the advisory and the review.
Strategic partnerships, protocol integrations, exchange listing arrangements, compute and hyperscaler vendor agreements, institutional commercial structures, and commercial frameworks for agentic AI and emerging technology infrastructure — areas where standard market templates are still forming.
Legal judgment grounded in direct operator experience: first GC building from zero, co-founder through an acquisition, structured finance attorney through the GFC, and active regulatory commentator and publisher at the intersection of crypto, AI, and infrastructure law. The kind of contextual judgment that only comes from having been on the other side of the table.
Well-suited for any early-stage or scaling company navigating fast-moving regulatory and technology terrain — with particular depth across digital assets, AI, and compute infrastructure. If your legal questions are evolving faster than standard templates, that's exactly the work this practice is designed for.
Token launches, CLARITY Act classification analysis, entity and governance architecture for protocols and foundations, treasury management policies, contributor frameworks, and regulatory strategy for blockchain-based products and infrastructure. The applicable legal frameworks are evolving rapidly and require ongoing practitioner-level engagement with current developments.
Money transmission, bank partnerships, stablecoin product structuring, compliance programs, and licensing strategy.
AI governance frameworks (EU AI Act, agentic systems, NIST AI RMF), data center and HPC infrastructure transactions, power procurement structures, miner-to-HPC legal architecture, compute vendor agreements, and the AI-specific commercial terms (acceptable use, output warranties, training data restrictions, model drift obligations) that now appear in every enterprise AI contract.
Companies that have been relying entirely on outside counsel and need someone to own the function — run the relationships, build the templates, set the governance posture, and manage specialists rather than accumulate their invoices. Typically seed through Series B; occasionally earlier for companies with complex regulatory or governance exposure from day one.
We start with a brief conversation to understand your company, legal needs, and scope. Following conflicts clearance, we agree on 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.
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.
Where matters require specialist depth — priced equity rounds, FERC-contested proceedings, patent prosecution, state MTL applications, securities enforcement defense — Irina identifies, engages, and manages the right outside counsel from an existing network calibrated to the specific matter type. You get one point of accountability and one invoice relationship, not a directory of firms to manage. The network is already built; you're not waiting for referrals.
Irina's practice sits at the intersection of structured finance, crypto governance, and AI systems law — a combination that is rare in the market and directly maps to what companies building across this stack actually need. Before DLx, she served as General Counsel of Gitcoin (a Paradigm-backed public goods protocol), where she built the legal function from zero, authored DAO governance frameworks that are cited across the field, and structured the first legal architectures for protocol treasury management and decentralized contributor compensation. Earlier, she structured over $7 billion in asset-backed and structured finance transactions at AmLaw 100 firms and Barclays Capital, including through the 2008–2009 credit crisis. She publishes practitioner-grade legal analysis on crypto, AI, and infrastructure law 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 her role with the Applied AI Society. Admitted in New York, Illinois, and the District of Columbia.
Send a brief note — company, stage, and the legal terrain you're navigating. If the work sits at the crypto × AI × infrastructure intersection and you need embedded counsel rather than outside firms billing by the matter, it's likely worth a conversation.
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.