How to hire a General Counsel in the UK, fractional or full time
Hiring a fractional General Counsel in the UK takes seven steps: write the gap down, set the budget from the published day-rate band, check fractional is the right shape, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, interview with the six questions below, agree the day-ninety markers in writing, and contract the days and the IR35 position. Most companies go from brief to signed contract in about two weeks. To skip the reading and meet people, hire a fractional General Counsel from the seat page.
UK day rates for the seat run £800 to £1,400. All eleven seats compared →
Fractional or full time: which General Counsel hire you need
A fractional General Counsel costs £800 to £1,400 a day, usually two days a week, which is £6,133 to £10,733 a month with no employer costs. A full-time General Counsel is a salary plus employer National Insurance and pension, and a retained search adds 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Fractional fits two or three days of judgement; full time fits five days of leadership.
| Route | Cost basis | Time to start | Commitment | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fractional | £800 to £1,400 a day; £6,133 to £10,733 a month at two days | Met within days, starting in one to three weeks | One to three days a week, usually a month's notice | Owning the General Counsel decisions two or three days a week |
| Interim | £15,333 to £26,833 a month at 5 days | Weeks rather than months | Full time for a fixed term, typically 3 to 9 months | Cover for a departure, a transaction or a turnaround with an end date |
| Full-time search | A salary plus employer costs, and 25 to 33 per cent of year one as the search fee | eight to twelve weeks of search, then three to six months of notice | Permanent and employed, five days a week | A five-day seat that is certain to be permanent |
The difference between the three routes is set out in full on fractional versus interim versus full-time, and hiring a full-time executive covers the permanent route.
Hiring a fractional General Counsel in seven steps
- Write the gap down. Name the two or three things a fractional General Counsel must own in the first quarter, and how many days a week that is. List what is actually on the desk: the contracts waiting, the round you are planning, the honest state of your data protection. A brief that says general legal support attracts generalists; a real workload attracts the right person. Below ↓
- Set the budget from the published band. UK fractional General Counsel day rates run £800 to £1,400 in 2026. Two days a week is £6,133 to £10,733 a month, with no employer costs on top. Fractional General Counsel cost →
- Check fractional is the right shape. A fractional General Counsel is two or three days a week for a year or more. If the need is five days for six months, or the seat is a full-time job already, interim or permanent fits better. Below ↓
- Shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage. Read track records, not titles. The right operator has been the General Counsel at a company of your size and stage before, and says what happened there in numbers. Browse the bench →
- Interview with the six questions. Every question asks for something that happened. An operator who has held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract. Below ↓
- Agree the day-ninety markers in writing. Put the day-ninety outcomes in the brief before they start. Your customer contract templates rebuilt, with a short playbook of fallback positions, so sales can close standard deals without a legal review on each one. Below ↓
- Contract the days, the notice period and the IR35 position. Fix the days a week, a notice period of a month, who owns the output, and the IR35 determination. Then set the start date and the first ninety-day review. IR35 for fractional executives →
What the seat covers is on the fractional General Counsel page. The rest of this page is the part that usually goes unwritten: the interview, day ninety, and when this hire is the wrong answer entirely.
Where to find a fractional General Counsel in the UK
Four routes work, and most companies use two of them at once. Whichever finds the person, the shortlist test is the same: they have held the seat at a company of your size and stage before.
- A platform or bench with the rate on the profile. The day rate is visible before the first call, which settles the budget conversation early. The UK fractional platforms, compared.
- A search against a written brief. Somebody else runs the longlist and the first interviews and puts a shortlist in front of you. How Operator Search works.
- Your investors, accountant or lawyer. They have seen fractional general counsel work at other companies and know which ones they would have back.
- Other founders. A General Counsel who has done it at a company like yours is usually two introductions away. Ask what they would hire them for again, not whether they were good.
Six questions to ask, and what a strong answer sounds like
Every question here asks for something that happened, not something they believe. An operator who has genuinely held the seat answers from memory; one who has advised from the sidelines answers in the abstract, and the difference is audible within a minute.
1. Tell me about a deal you advised the business to walk away from, and one where you got a risky clause over the line. How did you decide which was which?
Listen for: A strong answer weighs the exposure against what the deal was worth and ends in a recommendation someone acted on. A weak answer lists the risks on both and leaves the deciding to the client, which is exactly what you are trying to stop paying law firms for.
2. An enterprise customer sends a forty page MSA on their paper with uncapped liability. Walk me through your first pass.
Listen for: Strong candidates triage: liability cap, indemnities, IP ownership, data terms, then concede the rest quickly because a company your size cannot fight every clause. A weak answer is a full mark-up treating everything as equally important, which kills deals slowly.
3. What stays with you and what goes to a firm, and how do you keep the firm's bill down when it does?
Listen for: You want a clear line, typically litigation, specialist tax and contentious employment go out, plus habits like fixed fees and tight instructions. Be wary of anyone who claims to handle everything; that is not seniority, it is not knowing their limits.
4. How would you get our contracting to the point where sales can send most agreements without waiting for you?
Listen for: The strong answer is templates plus a playbook of pre-agreed fallback positions and a threshold above which deals escalate. A weak answer keeps every contract crossing their desk, which is a bottleneck for you and a billing model for them.
5. In your last in-house seat, what did you do when the board wanted to do something you thought was legally marginal?
Listen for: Strong answers put the risk in commercial terms, documented the advice, and offered a route that got most of what the board wanted. Weak answers either folded quietly or blocked the decision with no alternative, and both make you regret the hire.
6. Where does UK GDPR actually bite for a business like ours, and what would you check in the first week?
Listen for: Listen for specifics scaled to your business: lawful bases, processor agreements, international transfers, retention, how a subject access request would actually be handled. A weak answer is a policy pack and staff training, which is paperwork rather than practice.
Red flags
- Marks up every clause with the same energy. A GC who cannot tell you which three points in a contract actually matter becomes the bottleneck your sales team complains about within a month.
- Has no fallback positions. Ask what they typically concede on a liability cap, and if the answer is a shrug and it depends, they have never run a negotiation playbook, only individual negotiations.
- Talks about risk without ever asking what the deal is worth. Advice that ignores the number on the contract is a list of caveats, and you can get those cheaper from a firm.
- Vague about their practising certificate or insurance. A current SRA practising certificate and their own professional indemnity cover are the baseline for this seat, and checking takes two minutes.
What day ninety should look like
Agree these before they start, in writing, in the brief. A fractional engagement without a ninety-day marker drifts into a retainer nobody remembers the point of.
- Your customer contract templates rebuilt, with a short playbook of fallback positions, so sales can close standard deals without a legal review on each one.
- External legal spend mapped and under management: what each firm is actually for, routine work moved to fixed or capped fees, and any firm that was billing out of habit gone.
- A data protection position you could show a customer or an investor: records of processing, processor agreements in place, and a written list of the gaps that remain with dates against them.
When a fractional General Counsel is the wrong answer
- You are in live litigation or facing a regulatory investigation. That needs a specialist firm today; a fractional GC can instruct and manage that firm, but hiring one instead of it costs you weeks you do not have.
- You need one document: a single contract reviewed or terms of business drafted. Pay a solicitor a fixed fee for the document. A fractional seat only makes sense once legal questions arrive most weeks.
- The gap is really company secretarial: filings, board minutes, registers, option paperwork admin. A company secretary or your accountant covers that at a fraction of £800 to £1,400 a day.
If one of those is you, say so in a brief anyway and we will tell you straight. Sometimes the honest answer is interim or full-time.
What to put in a fractional General Counsel brief
- List what is actually on the desk: the contracts waiting, the round you are planning, the honest state of your data protection. A brief that says general legal support attracts generalists; a real workload attracts the right person.
- Put decision rights in writing: what they can sign off alone, what needs a founder, and the contract value above which a deal goes to the board. Experienced GCs turn down seats where they advise endlessly but never decide.
- Say which law firms you use and what they cost you last year. Founders always leave this out, and getting that spend under management is usually the fastest way this seat pays for itself.
What the contract should cover
General guidance rather than legal advice: have the engagement letter read by somebody who acts for you. These are the clauses that cause the arguments when they are missing.
- The days. How many a week or a month, whether they roll over, and the day rate or monthly figure that pays for them.
- Notice. A month either way is the usual term, long enough to hand over and short enough that neither side is trapped.
- Intellectual property. Who owns the models, documents and code the General Counsel produces. It should be the company, said in writing, because without a clause it may not be.
- IR35. Whether the engagement is inside or outside, who made the determination, and the reasons. IR35 for fractional executives explains who carries the decision.
The rest, from confidentiality to conversion terms, is in what a fractional executive contract should say.
Common questions about hiring a fractional General Counsel
How quickly can a company hire a fractional General Counsel?
Faster than any other way of filling the seat. A request to a fractional General Counsel on the bench is accepted or declined within three days, and a brief to Operator Search returns a shortlist in five business days. A permanent General Counsel search runs eight to twelve weeks to an accepted offer and then a notice period of three to six months, which is why fractional cover is the normal bridge.
How many days a week should a fractional General Counsel be hired for?
Two is the most common arrangement and one to three is the working range. Below a day a week nobody can own a function; above three the seat has usually become a full-time one and the honest conversation is about converting. Start at the lower end and add a day when decisions begin queueing for the General Counsel's days.
What is the monthly cost of a fractional General Counsel two days a week?
At the 2026 UK band of £800 to £1,400 a day, two days a week over 46 working weeks comes to £6,133 to £10,733 a month, invoiced by the operator's own company with no employer National Insurance, pension or recruitment fee on top. Still materially below partner-level law firm rates for equivalent seniority.
Can a fractional General Counsel later become the full-time General Counsel?
Yes, and it is one of the better routes to a permanent hire because both sides have had months of working interview. Raise the possibility early so the operator can plan their other clients, agree a start date around their notice to those clients, and check the engagement letter for any conversion terms before the conversation.
What should a brief for a fractional General Counsel say?
The three outcomes the seat owns in the first ninety days, the days a week and whether on site matters, who the General Counsel reports to and who reports to them, the systems and data they will inherit, and the budget as a day rate or a monthly figure. A brief that lists tasks rather than outcomes attracts people who want a to-do list, and the fractional general counsel worth hiring decline it.
When should a company hire a full-time General Counsel?
When the work fills five days and stays there: decisions queue for the General Counsel's days every week, there is a team of leaders to manage, and the role is certain to be permanent. A retained search for the seat runs 25 to 33 per cent of first-year earnings. Until all three are true, a fractional General Counsel at two days a week is the cheaper way to find out.
How long does it take to hire a General Counsel, fractional or full time?
A fractional General Counsel is usually met within days and starts in one to three weeks: Operator Search returns a shortlist in 5 business days, and a request on the bench is answered within three. A permanent General Counsel takes eight to twelve weeks of search to an accepted offer, then a notice period of three to six months, so a first day is usually six months or more away.
How do I find a part-time General Counsel?
Four routes work in the UK: a fractional platform or bench where the day rate is published before you speak to anybody, a search run against a written brief, a referral from an investor, accountant or another founder, and the General Counsel's own network of former colleagues. Whichever route, shortlist people who have held the seat at your stage, and agree the days, the notice period and the IR35 position in writing.
How to get to a shortlist
This seat is opening on the bench, so there is nobody listed to book direct yet. Brief Operator Search and the search runs across the wider market rather than only the people already listed.