Service
Fractional Legal Counsel for Scale-Ups
A senior commercial lawyer on a monthly retainer — for founders who have outgrown Googling contracts at midnight.
Fractional Legal Counsel is a senior commercial lawyer engaged on a monthly retainer to act as your business's ongoing legal partner. The angle here is for scale-ups and founder-led businesses where the founder is still doing legal work in the evenings — and it needs to stop.
Why Founders Reach for This
Every founder we work with has the same story. Early on, legal was one contract at a time and Google was enough. Then the business hit a size where every week has a legal wrinkle — a new customer wants their own MSA, a hire needs an employment agreement, the co-founder wants to formalise the split, a supplier is late paying, an investor wants a term sheet reviewed by tomorrow. Nothing is catastrophic, but the founder is spending three hours a week on legal admin and paying a firm every time it gets serious.
Fractional Legal Counsel is the fix. You hand the legal function to a senior lawyer who knows the business, on a fixed monthly fee.
What Changes in Week One
- Your inbox stops carrying legal questions — they go to us
- Your standard contracts get audited and tightened so sales stops relying on Word documents from 2021
- Your shareholders agreement, employment agreements and IP assignments get checked and updated
- You get a clear picture of your legal risk — and a shortlist of what to fix first
What It Looks Like Ongoing
- All incoming contracts reviewed and turned around inside 48 hours
- A weekly (or fortnightly) 30-minute call to work through anything active
- Legal input on hires, terminations, disputes, partnerships and deals as they arise
- Support on capital raises, ESOPs and acquisitions when they happen
Is It the Right Time?
The clearest signals a scale-up is ready for Fractional Legal Counsel:
- You are approving contracts you have not properly read
- Your last three legal invoices totalled more than $8,000 combined
- An investor, acquirer or big customer has flagged your legal house needs tidying
- You are the bottleneck for anything legal-related
What It Costs
Retainers start at $2,500 + GST per month. Most scale-ups sit in the $2,500–$5,000 + GST band until enterprise sales or a capital raise pushes them higher. Full pricing sits on the Fractional General Counsel service page.
Related
- Fractional General Counsel — the canonical service page
- Outsourced General Counsel — for businesses replacing a hire
- Part-Time General Counsel
- What is a Fractional General Counsel?
Talk to us
Ready to talk it through?
Send us a note about what you're working on. We'll respond within one business day and, if we're a fit, book a free 15-minute consultation with a senior lawyer.