When to hire an in-house lawyer?
In a world where you can buy part of a house, a slither of a Bitcoin or even part-own a wind farm it seems mad that access to an in-house lawyer tends to be binary. You either have a General Counsel or you don’t. The reality is that your needs don’t go from 0 to 100 and so being able to access the right type of legal advice between 1 and 99 is crucial to building a successful business for the long term.
For startups, scaleups and SMEs, every decision can feel make or break. Legal challenges are often key, but the reality is that hiring a permanent in-house general counsel can be daunting, unrealistic and ultimately premature. Traditional alternatives all come with their own downsides:
Option | What this means | Downsides |
Do it yourself | Trawling the internet, using self-serve platforms or playing legal tennis with Chat GPT can get you off the ground | · Distraction from key company goal(s) (e.g. building a product, driving revenue or looking for investment) · Mistakes are likely and risks can mount up · Likely to lead to future risks and challenges that could derail key events (e.g. investor DD before a funding round) |
Don’t do it at all | It’s certainly possible to ignore legal questions and issues to a point but ultimately this means your pushing the issue(s) onto your future self | · You will build up ‘Legal debt’ which will need to be fixed in the future · You won’t know what these risks are and if they’re acceptable to you or the company · It’s ultimately (generally) more expensive to fix things in retrospect than to manage the risks in real-time · You might put off more sophisticated customers if your legal set up isn’t sufficiently professional |
Favours from lawyer friends / former colleagues | This can be a great approach to get started but once things get a bit more complex, something goes wrong, or you need sector specific advice this may not last the course | · May not get sector or stage specific advice · Your issue won’t be the key priority · No contract (or insurance) to rely on if things do go wrong |
Using a private practice law firm | Here you should get the right expertise and knowledge (assuming you choose the right firm and lawyer) but… | · Hourly rates at big City firms can be prohibitive · If you get some sort of deal, be wary of your work being pushed down to more junior resources · You may not be a priority for firms dealing with much bigger clients and matters so you may not get the timely responses you need · Not all private practice lawyers ‘get-it’ when it comes to a scale-ups’ key priorities |
If you’re thinking that this looks like a fairly unappealing menu to order from: we agree.
Luckily at Seven Legal we have a transformative solution – the Fractional General Counsel (Fractional GC).
Our Fractional GC subscription services empowers startups and businesses, with top-notch legal expertise and experience earned directly from other unicorn success stories. The Fractional GC service enables founders to get the advice they need in a completely flexible and on-demand way.
It’s a solution that enables scaling businesses to solve all the complex legal challenges that might crop up: from reducing time-to-revenue; to ensuring compliance with privacy rules; and preparing for your next fundraising. Our Fractional GC service redefines the way startups should approach their legal needs.
What is a Fractional General Counsel?
So, what is Fractional GC? A Fractional GC is a Ronseal product (it does exactly what it says on the tin). You can ‘subscribe’ to an expert lawyer on a part-time (fractional) basis without any long-term commitment. For that you get legal advice and guidance, just like a full-time general counsel, but with the ability to flex the support up and down to match changing business needs.
Founders or business leaders get on-demand access to industry experts who specialise in high-growth scale ups, without breaking the bank. This means solving legal problems in a way that can evolve and grow with your business.
Advantages of using a Fractional General Counsel?
Having a real expert at your fingertips means you can manage legal risks whilst growing and scaling your business. Key benefits include:
- Growth Enablement: Scale your business on solid foundations by mitigating key business and legal risks – setting you up for long term success.
- Flexibility & Scalability: Quickly and effectively scale your legal resources up or down based on changing needs and requirements. Support levels can be adjusted at any time.
- Value: Get access to legal expertise and resources without the overhead costs (and risks) associated with hiring and training a dedicated lawyer.
- Specialist Expertise: We’ve advised hundreds of growth businesses and will apply this deep expertise and experience to solve problems quickly and effectively.
Why is using Fractional GCs on the Rise?
Using fractional advisers is on the rise generally, however it is only now taking off for Fractional GC’s. Part of its success is likely due to both the challenging macro-economic environment and the internal advantages of having fractional support. Frankly, it just makes sense to engage specialist legal support earlier and with a proactive, solution focused mindset. It enables companies to start to mitigate risk and plan for long-term success without having to make the significant outlay of a permanent lawyer (who may not move the needle).
Embedding a Fractional GC also means getting ahead of key legal and business challenges, which will ultimately reduce future pain and costs. Expert support means businesses can pre-emptively and proactively tackling challenges in real-time, with a full picture of the risks involved.
How does Fractional GC work in practice?
Our Fractional GC team is made up of genuine superstar lawyers who have a wealth of experience in the start-up and scale-up ecosystem. They’ve supported some of the most successful unicorns at key stages of their grow journeys, including: TikTok, Checkout.com, Just Eat, Zilch and USwitch (to name a few).
This means you’ll always engage with a lawyer who genuinely ‘gets it’ and can advise and support in a pragmatic and solution-oriented way.
The most important first step is to give you peace of mind and confidence that having a Fractional GC is right for you. So, at Seven Legal we always start with a free discovery call to understand and identify key issues. This gives you the opportunity to ask any questions you might have and build confidence in the team you’ll work with. From there, give us a try – we offer a money back guarantee so use us for a month and we don’t deliver, we’ll simply refund you.
To sum it all up?
Our Fractional GC services are a game-changing solution for startups, scaleups and smaller businesses. We are looking to redefine how these businesses access legal support and democratise access to the right type of lawyers who really ‘get it’. We want to work with exciting companies long-term to super-charge sustainable growth as we help to solve complex legal challenges simply and effectively.
If you’re interested in finding out more about Seven Legal’s Fractional GC services, please get in touch.
Author: Saman Harris
Head of Commercial & Fractional GC
Saman is a senior commercial tech GC with expertise supporting tech companies and Fintechs safely navigate complex legal and commercial issues during periods of rapid international expansion. Saman brings strong experience in regulatory, commercial, product, employment, finance and corporate work. He has spent his career enabling high growth tech businesses to scale whilst managing commercial and legal risks for those businesses.
He is currently Fractional General Counsel to four of Seven Legal’s clients.
Seven Legal provides stage specific legal advice for fast growth technology companies. Built on advising hundreds of founding teams in the UK, US and India with funding, scaling and exiting high growth ventures, our expert tech lawyers will be a growth enabler for your business.
