The Business Case for Fractional General Counsel: Cost, Flexibility, and Strategic Value

You're managing a growing business with big ambitions. Your team is expanding, decisions are becoming more complex, and you've realised you need solid legal support in place. But when you look at the cost of hiring a full-time senior in-house lawyer, upwards of £90,000+ per year, plus benefits and overhead, it doesn't quite add up for where your business is right now.

You're not alone. This is one of the most common dilemmas facing ambitious SMEs and growing businesses. You need expert legal guidance. You just don't need it full-time, and you can't justify the cost of a traditional law firm on retainer.

That's where a Fractional General Counsel becomes not just an option, but a genuinely smart business decision.

Let's talk through the numbers, the flexibility, and the real strategic value of embedded legal support for your business.

Understanding the Cost Landscape

When you're evaluating legal support options, there are typically three routes available to growing businesses:

The Full-Time In-House Senior Lawyer costs upwards of £90,000+ annually, plus national insurance, pension contributions, benefits and overheads. For a small to medium sized business, this is a significant fixed cost. You're committing to paying this salary regardless of whether you need intensive legal support that month or minimal guidance. For many growing businesses, especially those not yet at serious investment or acquisition stage, this represents poor capital allocation. You're paying for capacity you won't consistently use.

Traditional Law Firms charge by the hour, at partner level this can be £500+ per hour depending on the firm's reputation. There's no continuity; you might work with different lawyers on different matters. There's often a disconnect between the legal advice you receive and your actual business context. Law firms optimise for legal perfection and risk minimisation, not for what's commercially sensible for your specific situation. And costs can escalate quickly; a seemingly simple matter can become an expensive exercise if complications arise.

A Fractional General Counsel sits between these two extremes. You get director-level expertise without the full-time salary overhead. You access someone who understands your business because they're embedded in your leadership team. You pay for the hours and projects you actually need, whether that's a retained arrangement of a few days per month, project-based support for a specific initiative, or hourly advice as needed. The cost is transparent and predictable.

For most growing businesses, fractional general counsel delivers better value than either alternative.

The Flexibility Advantage

Fractional legal support isn't a one-size-fits-all model. It adapts to where your business is and what you actually need.

Retained Support is the foundation. You might agree on 2 to 4 days per month, embedded in your leadership team. They attend key meetings. They're part of the strategic conversation. When employment issues arise, when contracts need reviewing, when you're planning a restructure, your lawyer is already in the room and understands the context. This is the sweet spot for most growing businesses because you get continuity and strategic input without the full-time overhead.

Project-Based Support sits on top of retained work. You're planning a product launch and need regulatory and commercial contract support. You're preparing for investment and need due diligence work on your employment practices and contracts. You're restructuring and need HR and legal strategy. You add focused support for that project, paying for the additional work separately.

Hourly Support works for businesses that don't yet need retained counsel. You have an employment question. You need a contract reviewed urgently. You're not ready to commit to regular support, but you need expert guidance on specific issues. You pay by the hour for that advice.

The beauty of fractional support is that this can evolve. You might start with hourly advice. As your business grows and your needs increase, you move to project-based support. When you're scaling seriously, retained support becomes your foundation. If your business reaches the point where you need a full-time in-house general counsel, you know what that looks like because you've been working with your fractional counsel.

Strategic Value: Beyond Just Cost

The financial comparison is important, but the real strategic value of fractional general counsel goes deeper.

Embedded Business Understanding means better advice. Your fractional counsel understands your business model, your team dynamics, your culture, your commercial goals, and your risk appetite. They're not giving you generic legal advice; they're giving you advice tailored to your specific situation. This context matters enormously when you're trying to balance legal protection with commercial reality.

Strategic Input on Big Decisions is transformational. When you're considering a product launch, you have legal and regulatory input before you commit. When you're thinking about hiring or restructuring, you have employment law expertise helping you shape the approach. When you're preparing for investment, you have someone helping you identify and address legal and HR risks upfront. This isn't about saying "no" to ideas; it's about identifying options, understanding trade-offs, and helping you make informed decisions.

Confidence in Decision-Making changes how you operate as a leader. Instead of making decisions and hoping the legal implications work out, you're making decisions with expert input. That confidence translates into faster decision-making, better outcomes, and reduced stress.

Risk Prevention vs Crisis Management is a fundamental shift. When you have embedded legal support, you're identifying and managing risks proactively. You're building robust employment contracts, clear compliance policies, and sound commercial practices. This prevents problems before they become expensive, disruptive, or damaging to your reputation. The cost of managing a crisis, employment tribunal claim, contract dispute, compliance breach, is always higher than the cost of preventing it.

Cultural Alignment matters if you're building a values-driven business. You want practices that protect and support your team, not just minimise legal risk. You want contracts that reflect your commercial approach and your values. A fractional general counsel who understands this builds practices that genuinely work for your culture, not just tick compliance boxes

The Return on Investment (ROI)

When you're making a business decision, ROI matters. So let's think about working with a fractional general counsel from an ROI perspective.

Direct Cost Savings: By preventing one significant employment dispute, contract issue, or compliance problem, you've paid for months of fractional support. An employment tribunal claim can cost £10,000 to £100,000+ in legal fees, settlement costs, and management time. A contract dispute can delay a deal, lose clients or create unexpected liability. A compliance breach can result in fines and reputational damage. Ongoing, embedded legal support prevents these problems.

Faster, Better Decision-Making: When you're making strategic decisions with expert input, you make better decisions faster. This translates into faster growth, better commercial terms, more confident expansion, and reduced wasted effort on decisions that create legal problems later.

Reduced Management Burden and Stress: Legal issues can consume enormous amounts of your time and emotional energy as a leader. Having expert support managing these issues and providing guidance frees you to focus on growth and strategy. That's worth something in terms of your own wellbeing and effectiveness.

Scalability and Flexibility: You're not locked into a fixed cost. As your business grows, your support can evolve. You can start with hourly support, move to project-based, and eventually retain a fractional counsel. You can adjust up or down based on business needs. This flexibility means you're always paying for what you need, not for excess capacity or struggling to afford what you need.

Investment Readiness: If you're eventually planning to raise investment or sell your business, having embedded legal support from the start means you're building defensible practices from day one. When due diligence happens, you're not scrambling to fix problems. You're showcasing solid practices and clear documentation. This speeds up the process and protects value.

Making the Decision

If you're a growing business with no in-house legal expertise, working with a fractional general counsel is worth serious consideration. You're at the stage where you need expert support, but you don't need it full-time. You're building a business you want to be proud of, and you want to do things properly. You're commercially minded and pragmatic.

Legal isn't a luxury add-on, and working with a fractional general counsel is a smart, cost-effective way to access director-level legal expertise, embedded in your leadership team, without the overhead of a full-time hire or the inefficiency of traditional law firm engagement.

The question isn't whether you can afford it, it's whether you can afford not to.

Getting Started

If this resonates with where your business is, the next step is a conversation. We can talk through your specific situation, your goals, and what embedded fractional support might look like for your business. There's no obligation, no lengthy proposal process. Just a pragmatic discussion about how we might help you scale with confidence.

This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Specific legal or strategic advice should be sought separately and tailored to the particular circumstances of your business. If you would like to discuss how these issues apply to your organisation, please get in touch.