About two years ago, when Amit Khanna was doing some legal work for “headquarters as a service” Knotel as an outside consultant, he wasn’t convinced the company needed a full-time in-house lawyer. So the CEO, Amol Sarva, told him, “OK, well, join us full time and work on more than legal work.” The offer appealed to Khanna, who didn’t expect he’d ever be a general counsel of a company.

Khanna has worked in private practice, most recently with Fenwick & West. And he has provided legal services for companies through The Schmidt Family Foundation, created by former Google executive Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt. Now he leads a legal department of four and expects he could have as many as 10 lawyers by year’s end at New York-based Knotel, which provides and operates custom office space for companies in cities around the world.