When to Hire a General Counsel: The Maths at 30, 100 and 300 Staff

Founders usually ask the general counsel question at the wrong moment — either long after a redundancy round has gone wrong, or far too early, when a single hire can't justify its own salary. Here is where the maths actually turns, staff count by staff count.

Deciding · Part of Outsourced General Counsel

The decision nobody makes at the right time

Most founders decide they need proper legal cover in the middle of a crisis: a departing co-founder threatening a claim, a customer contract that turns out to bind the company to terms nobody read, a redundancy round that goes wrong. By then the question isn't "when should we have done this" — it's "how much does this crisis cost, on top of everything else."

The better question is asked earlier, and it has a numerical answer. Legal workload doesn't grow in a straight line with headcount. It grows in steps, because employment law and company law are both built around headcount thresholds. Knowing where those steps sit tells you when the maths changes.

What changes at 30 staff

Two thresholds sit either side of the 30-employee mark, and founders rarely know they exist until they're inside them.

At 21 workers, a trade union's application for statutory recognition becomes admissible, potentially forcing an employer into collective bargaining, under Schedule A1 of the Employment Relations Act 1999. Separately, proposing to make 20 or more people redundant at one establishment within a 90-day window triggers the collective consultation duty under section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 — a minimum 30-day consultation before the first dismissal can take effect.

Neither threshold announces itself. A founder doing a headcount reduction at 32 staff who runs it like the individual conversations that worked at 12 staff is running a process that's unlawful by construction, not by bad luck. Further back still, from the moment an employer has five or more employees, a written health and safety policy statement is a legal requirement under section 2(3) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 — so most businesses are already inside a statutory documentation duty long before they reach 30 staff.

This is the point at which contracts of employment, a share option pool, IP assignment on hire, and a supplier contract library someone actually owns stop being "get to it eventually" and start being live exposure. It's rarely worth a full-time hire. It is worth someone with authority over the whole legal file.

The workload compounds by 100

Nothing new switches on exactly at 100 staff, but everything that switched on earlier gets heavier. Where 100 or more redundancies are proposed at one establishment, the minimum consultation period rises to 45 days, down from 90 days following amendment by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. Commercial contract volume by this size usually means multiple sales, procurement and property arrangements running concurrently, each carrying its own negotiation, renewal and dispute risk. So does the number of people across the business who can commit the company to something in an email without meaning to.

This is also usually the size at which a business starts crossing from "small" toward "medium" under the Companies Act 2006 size tests: exceeding two of three thresholds — turnover above £10.2 million, balance sheet total above £5.1 million, or more than 50 employees — moves a company out of the small companies regime. That has real consequences for statutory accounts and audit exemption, which is a specialist's job, but it's also a marker: the company's legal footprint has outgrown what one non-specialist member of the leadership team can hold in their head alongside their actual job.

By 300, the reporting duties land whether you're ready or not

Employers with 250 or more employees must publish gender pay gap figures annually, under the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017. At broadly the same threshold, companies typically move into the "large" category under the Companies Act 2006 — exceeding turnover of £36 million, balance sheet total of £18 million, or 250 employees — with the governance, reporting and audit consequences that follow.

None of this is optional and none of it is a one-off. It recurs every year, on a statutory clock, on top of whatever employment, commercial and property exposure the business has accumulated on the way there. Almost no UK business ever reaches this size — official business population estimates published by the Department for Business and Trade show large businesses make up a very small proportion of the total UK business population — but the ones that do arrive here whether or not their legal function has kept pace.

Three routes, priced honestly

There are three ways to buy legal cover at this stage, and they price out differently.

In-house hire. One person, on payroll, with National Insurance, pension contribution, holiday cover and recruitment cost sitting on top of salary. A single hire is a single point of failure — no cover when they're on leave, no second opinion when the question is genuinely hard, and a hiring and notice-period timeline measured in months before they're even in the building. And a General Counsel who isn't a practising solicitor still can't personally conduct litigation, handle reserved instrument work, or exercise rights of audience — those are reserved legal activities restricted to authorised or exempt persons under section 12 and Schedule 2 of the Legal Services Act 2007. So even a strong in-house hire needs a panel of external specialists behind them, and someone still has to manage that panel.

Law firm retainer. Billing is usually hourly, which means the cost curve tracks events, not stability — quiet months cost little, and a bad month costs a great deal, often without warning until the invoice arrives. A retainer with a law firm buys access to specific expertise as problems land; it rarely buys a standing view of the whole commercial file, because that isn't what the billing model rewards.

Outsourced General Counsel. A fixed monthly fee buys a standing function that carries the whole legal and commercial file — contracts, employment risk, corporate structure, governance — and coordinates specialists for reserved work when it's genuinely needed, holding the budget and the outcome rather than passing the founder between advisers. It doesn't replace the specialists a business needs for litigation, property or tax; it decides when they're needed, briefs them once, and stops the founder paying for advice twice. At 30 staff this is usually bought as a fractional General Counsel, a day or two a week; by 300 it is a function with a lead and specialists behind them.

Where a specialist is needed

Nothing above changes the position on reserved legal activities. The exercise of a right of audience, the conduct of litigation, reserved instrument activities (most conveyancing and property transactions), probate activities, notarial activities and the administration of oaths are restricted to authorised or exempt persons under the Legal Services Act 2007. Tax computations and filing positions sit with a specialist accountant or tax adviser, not with a General Counsel of any description. The question at 30, 100 or 300 staff isn't whether specialists get instructed — they always do, at every size. It's who decides when, briefs them once, and is accountable for what they deliver. That's the role Dinmore Bell holds: instructing the specialist, holding the budget, and owning the outcome.

The maths, in short

The workload doesn't creep upward smoothly. It steps up around 20-30 staff, compounds by 100, and lands as a set of unavoidable statutory duties by 250-300. A single in-house hire prices in a salary, on-costs and a single point of failure long before the workload justifies a full headcount. A law firm retainer prices in access to expertise without a standing view of the file. An outsourced General Counsel function prices the whole file at a fixed monthly fee and decides, deliberately, when a specialist earns their invoice.