What is Fidelity Private Shares?

Fidelity Private Shares provides an all-in-one solution for managing a startup’s corporate legal activities by facilitating Equity Management, HR, Corporate Governance, and Financings in a single platform. We believe startups need legal advice, and their lawyer is a fundamental part of the company’s world in Fidelity Private Shares. Our platform allows attorneys to collaborate with companies easily and efficiently, for everything from incorporation to financings.

What is a Workflow?

The platform includes over 50 workflows that fall under the categories of Corporate Structure, Governance, Government Filing, Human Resources, Equity, Financing, Data Room, and User Directory.

Workflows allow users to generate and execute documents or upload documents that have been signed outside the platform. In some cases, like Stock Incentive Plan forms, the system will attach a cover page to the company's form, allowing them to benefit from the efficiency of a workflow while utilizing their preferred forms (more on that structure here).

Each workflow takes the user (either by the company or their lawyer) through a step-by-step process of gathering specific information.
Legal documents are generated based on information that was gathered during the workflow.
Documents are circulated for legal review (if the workflow is being run by the company) and sent out for electronic signature(s).
Signed documents are stored in a secure data room, and data from those documents populate other reports, such as the Cap Table.

What documents does the platform create?

The workflows can generate a range of legal documents, the templates for which were prepared by our legal team (who are largely Goodwin Procter alums). These templates are currently being used by attorneys in over 100 law firms who represent hundreds of clients on the system. A few examples are below:

Equity: Stock Incentive Plans, Stock Option Agreements, Restricted Stock Agreements, and Founder Restricted Stock Agreements.
Human Resources: Offer Letters, Employee Confidentiality and Assignment Agreements, and IP Contribution Agreements.
Corporate Governance: Board Consents, Board Minutes, and Stockholder Consents.
Fundraising: SAFEs, Convertible Notes, and the NVCA and Series Seed equity financing documents.

What is the lawyer's role in Fidelity Private Shares?

Counsel involvement is an important part of a company's success in Fidelity Private Shares. Companies and their lawyers decide how they want to work together by identifying which workflows should require counsel review and which workflows should be set as counsel review optional.

The first step is for a company to register counsel. Once that is done, the company and its lawyer decide on Counsel Involvement Settings.

How does counsel review work?

When a company runs a workflow that is set to counsel review required, or which the company indicates that they would like their counsel to review, the lawyer will be notified by email that documents are ready for their review and will be provided a link to that process.

From here, the lawyer can view the document template and the generated documents. If the documents are acceptable, the lawyer can approve them, or if changes are necessary, the lawyer can incorporate those changes into the documents and send them back to the client for review. You can read more about that process here.

Additional Resources

Adding Law Firm Team Members

Screenshots are for illustrative purposes only.

Fidelity does not provide legal or tax advice. The information herein is general in nature and should not be considered legal or tax advice. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific situation.

Fidelity Private Shares LLC provides cap table management and other administrative services to private companies and their equity compensation plans.
Fidelity Private Shares LLC

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