Fractional General Counsel
The senior legal mind your business needs, without the full-time hire
Strategic, in-house-style legal leadership for growing businesses: an experienced General Counsel embedded in your business on a part-time basis, and at a fraction of the cost of a permanent hire.
What is a Fractional General Counsel?
A General Counsel is the senior lawyer inside a business. The person who owns the legal function, sits as part of the leadership team, and helps steer the decisions that carry real risk. Most growing businesses need that judgement long before they can justify a full-time hire.
A Fractional General Counsel gives you exactly that, part-time: an experienced senior lawyer embedded in your business for an agreed amount of time each month, holding your legal risk, in the room for the decisions that matter, and on hand when something lands. All without the salary, the equity or the overhead of a permanent appointment.
You're scaling fast, and contracts, people issues and regulatory questions are multiplying faster than you can keep on top of them.
Your clients are getting bigger, and their terms are getting tougher.
You're preparing for investment, an acquisition, a sale or a new market, and you need someone senior steering the legal side.
Your board or leadership team needs a legal voice in the room, not just a firm to call after the fact.
You have no in-house lawyer, or one who's stretched too thin, and legal risk is starting to sit with people who shouldn't be carrying it.
Your business might need one if…
What I do as your Fractional General Counsel
Own your legal function.
A single, senior point of ownership for legal risk across the business so it isn't falling to your founders, your finance lead or your office manager by default.
Advise at board and leadership level.
The legal voice in the room when strategic decisions are made (investment, restructuring, senior hires and exits, major commercial deals) helping you understand the legal and commercial implications of each option so you can decide with confidence.
Handle the commercial and people legal work.
Client terms of business, supplier and partner contracts, employment and consultancy agreements, restrictive covenants, policies, and the disputes that arise along the way.
Manage risk and compliance proactively.
Spotting issues before they become problems, and building right-sized processes and governance, proportionate to your business, not gold-plated.
Coordinate external specialists.
Instructing and managing specialist firms when a matter needs them, translating their advice into something you can act on, and keeping their spend under control.
Develop your team.
Giving your internal HR, operations or junior legal people a senior lead to learn from, so capability grows inside the business rather than leaving with me.
How we work together
I act as your Fractional General Counsel on an ongoing basis, typically two to five days a month, scaling up or down as the business demands. We agree the shape of the relationship up front: how much time, what you need me focused on, and how we'll work together. You get a senior lawyer who knows your business inside out, available on a predictable monthly basis for a predictable monthly cost.
Prefer to start smaller? I also offer retained legal support, a set number of senior legal hours each month, drawn down as you need them, and one-off advice for a specific matter. Many clients begin there and grow into a fuller Fractional GC relationship as the business scales.
About me
I'm not a lawyer adapting to the idea of a General Counsel role, it's the role I've held. As General Counsel and then Chief Operating Officer, I've owned the legal function of a listed group, sat on the board, led the legal side of a private equity investment, and carried the commercial consequences of these decisions myself. So you get more than legal cover: you get someone who understands the pressure, the people and the pace of a growing business, because I've run one from the inside.
Beyond the law
Some businesses need more than legal leadership. They need senior operational, commercial and people leadership too.
Where that's the case, I offer broader consultancy, so you can draw on one person, and one relationship, across both.
Getting Started
Start with a free, no-obligation conversation. If a Fractional GC arrangement is right for you, we'll agree the scope, the time and the fee up front — so you know exactly what you're getting before we begin.