Our Story
About Cognition
One conversation changed everything.
Two lawyers. Both having trained at major law firms. Joe Milstone at Oslers. Rubsun Ho at Stikeman Elliott. Both having worked long stints as Vice President, Legal with major companies. Two over-achieving, over-worked, over-wrought lawyers talking about gruelling 100-hour+ work weeks. How they wanted to continue doing what they were passionate about – helping businesses solve their legal issues and legal departments flourish – yet needing to start over again with a blank canvas. The light bulb came on.
Retaining a traditional law firm or hiring full-time, in-house counsel is too expensive for most start-ups and smaller companies who need to make every dollar count. Too inefficient for big companies facing budget cuts or staffing freezes. And often, the legal advice is too remote, too theoretical to be of any practical business value.
The solution? Cognition: a just-in-time approach that enables you to employ senior, business-focused legal counsel only when you need it, so you only pay for the work you need done, at a fraction of the typical cost of Big Law or hiring a full-time, in-house employee. No idle time. No long learning curves. No lawyers fresh out of law school.
The bottom line? Working with Cognition saves the average business tens of thousands of dollars each year and virtually none of the money you spend goes towards keeping our lights on. Or pinstripe suits, imported stogies or corporate jets.
Recent Work
• Led the sale of all shares of a Canadian software company to an international telecommunications technology provider.
• Led the sale of all shares of a Canadian financial analytics company to an international financial information company.
• Represented the creditor in a secured loan to a mobile strategy development company.
• Represented the debtor in a $20 million secured debt facility from an international financial institution.
• Represented private software application development company in US$4 million sale of all its shares.
• Acted for selling shareholders/directors in a $12 million combined management buy-out and third-party purchase of a technology company.
• Represented a private merchant bank in numerous secured debt financings to various debtors in North America in an aggregate amount of $16.9 million.
• Represented private software company in arranging $1.5 million secured debt financing from Business Development Canada.
• Drafted online terms of service for a technology company providing map location services for cell phone users.
• Advised on the availability for use and registration of a new brand in the food services industry.
• Led a multi-tranche $3 million foreign equity investment on behalf of the Canadian multi-media start-up issuer.
• Led a $2 million preferred share investment from public and private (including venture money) investors on behalf of one of Canada’s first B-Corps.
• Led a cross-Atlantic acquisition by a Canadian manage-ment consulting firm of a London-based consulting business.
• Advised several start-up and SME businesses through equity and debt initial and pre-IPO capitalizations to product/service launch.
• Negotiated the license of client’s ticketing technology to the largest owner/operator of theatres in the United Kingdom.