33.0°N 097.1°W · Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas

The windward
advantage.

In sailing, holding the windward position provides significant tactical, strategic, and performance advantages. In competitive seas, we help clients face their headwinds, navigate with purpose, and advance against resistance. Windward Counsel is an AI-native business law firm — pairing decades on the principal's side of the table with modern tooling that does the grind, so our partners can focus on judgment and guidance. Legal navigation at the speed of business.

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EST. 2026 — TEXAS AI-NATIVE · FLAT-FEE · RESULTS, NOT HOURS

Counsel that thinks like a principal.

Windward Counsel is built on a simple idea: the most useful lawyer in the room is the one who has sat on your side of the table. Our two partners have spent their careers there — founding and running businesses, meeting payroll, structuring the raise, and closing the deal — not just advising on the work, but doing it.

That perspective changes everything. You get a partner, not a markup. You get an operator's read on risk, not a memo that hedges. We are not selling hours and we are not selling certainty — we are selling results and the conviction to act. Our time in the captain's seat lets us help founders and management reach the confidence to move decisively, or to drop sail and hold for a moment when the path ahead is not yet clear.

Practice areas

Where deep water meets the deal.

01 · NATURAL RESOURCES

Oil, Gas & Critical Minerals

Non-operated working interests, mineral and royalty acquisitions, lithium and brine across the Permian Basin and the Smackover play, geothermal development, midstream agreements, and new-technology consulting in the natural resources space.

02 · CORPORATE

M&A & Corporate

The full lifecycle of a growing company — formation and conversions, governance, buy- and sell-side transactions, joint ventures, and the commercial agreements that hold a company together — from startup through to exit, merger, or IPO.

03 · CAPITAL

Capital Formation & Securities

The full arc of capital formation, from a founder's first raise to IPO preparation — Regulation D private placements, convertible notes, fund formation, equity grants, and securities structuring built to survive diligence.

04 · REAL ESTATE

Real Estate & Syndication

Real estate syndications and joint ventures, build-to-rent and development structures, participation and profit-sharing agreements, and property contributions into new venture entities.

05 · EMERGING TECH

Gaming, Tech & Tokenization

Commercializing what you've built — game development, publishing, and IP licensing; tokenization and digital-asset structuring; and the licensing, financing, and commercial architecture that turns new technology into a business.

06 · ON-CALL LEADERSHIP

Fractional General Counsel & Strategic Advisor

Senior, on-call legal leadership for startups and growth-stage companies that need a general counsel's judgment — without a general counsel's overhead. A strategic advisor embedded in your team under the legal umbrella, engaged on a retainer and accountable for outcomes.

How we work

The grind is automated. The judgment is not.

Most of what a traditional firm bills for is mechanical — assembling precedent, conforming defined terms, checking cross-references. We engineered that away, so a defined-scope matter is a fixed price quoted before we start, and standard documents come back in days, often the same day.

STEP 01

Open a matter

Start a matter through the portal, email, or a direct conversation. We confirm scope and check conflicts — no five rounds of questions before work can begin.

STEP 02

See the price first

We quote a fixed fee before any work begins, typically around half of conventional rates. You approve it up front. No hourly meter, no surprise invoice.

STEP 03

Tooling does the production

Our AI pipeline assembles the work product from our own curated, jurisdiction-specific precedent — with automated checks for defined terms, cross-references, and formalities.

STEP 04

A partner signs off

A licensed Texas attorney applies judgment to your deal terms, verifies the work, and delivers it. Securities offerings get two-attorney review.

~80%

Done by the tooling

First-draft assembly, retrieval over our precedent library, and automated conformance — the document grind that used to consume days of associate time, compressed to minutes.

~20%

Done by the partner

The part that actually requires a license and a career of judgment: deal-specific tailoring, regulatory read, negotiation strategy, and final sign-off. The senior lawyer who quotes your matter is the one who delivers it.

We compress the cycle time between a decision and the legal confidence to act on it. You rarely need perfect information — you need enough to move intelligently, and the judgment to adjust if you must. Getting clients to that threshold, fast, is where an operator's counsel outpaces a conventional firm that will still take weeks to get around to it.

Why Windward

Three reasons clients hold the Windward side.

A — OPERATOR

An operator's instincts

Counsel from someone who has been the client — chief legal officer, deal principal, founder, executive — and evaluates risk and operational strategy the way a principal does.

B — VELOCITY

Accelerated

Modern tooling compresses cycle time and removes the legal chokepoint in your operations and decision-making, accelerating your enterprise. You pay for results, not hours and days spent waiting.

C — TRANSPARENT

Transparency

Our flat-fee and retainer billing models end the black-box guesswork of traditional legal billing. Teams can budget their legal spend and engage Windward with confidence that there will be no surprises.

How we charge

Two ways to engage.
No hourly meter.

We bill for results and legal confidence, not for hours. Defined work is a flat fee quoted before we start; ongoing access is a retainer that keeps strategic counsel one call away.

Flat-fee · transactional

Fixed price, quoted first

Typically ~50% of conventional rates

For defined-scope work — formations, financings, securities offerings, real estate, energy and corporate agreements. You see the price and the timeline before engaging, and standard documents are delivered in days, often same-day.

Quote and turnaround confirmed up front
One revision round and conformance pass included
Attorney review on everything; two-attorney review on securities

Retainer · strategic

Counsel on call

Monthly retainer · custom to your volume

For ongoing navigation, priority access, volume contract flow, and the early, candid conversations that catch issues while they are still small and inexpensive — the trim-tab adjustments that keep larger initiatives on course.

Priority access to a partner, no per-call metering
Document allowances and volume per-contract pricing
Embedded fractional general counsel available

Anything not on a published menu is quoted up front as a flat fee. Where a matter is genuinely novel, we scope and price it before we begin — never billed by the hour after the fact.

The partners

Two principals.
One heading.

Managing Partner · Co-Founder

Scott Beckmen

A Texas attorney with more than fifteen years in corporate, M&A, energy, and capital formation. He has structured Regulation D placements and convertible-debt financings across the Permian Basin and the Smackover lithium play, and served as chief legal officer and deal counsel to a growth-stage company — counsel who has founded businesses and sat in the principal's seat, not only advised from outside it.

State Bar of Texas, 2008
Corporate · M&A · Energy · Capital Formation

Partner · Co-Founder

Rand Marsh

A natural-resources lawyer with three decades in oil and gas, title examination, and energy transactions. His career spans royalty and IP litigation, startup commercialization, and international business development. A member of the American Association of Professional Landmen, he is a frequent speaker at industry training events.

State Bar of Texas · J.D., University of Oklahoma
Oil & Gas · Natural Resources · Energy Transactions

The windwardadvantage.