What a fully loaded General Counsel actually costs
The comparison is not our fee against an hourly rate. It is our fee against the hire you would otherwise make.
When founders benchmark an outsourced General Counsel they usually compare the monthly fee to a law firm's hourly rate, decide the firm looks cheaper per hour, and stop. It is the wrong comparison, because a law firm does not do the job. A law firm answers questions. The job is owning the outcome.
The right comparison is the hire. A General Counsel capable of running a founder-led business through a raise, a dispute and a cross-border expansion costs between £175,000 and £310,000 a year fully loaded — salary plus employer national insurance, pension, benefits, equipment and recruitment fees, which together add roughly a fifth to the headline number.
There is also a utilisation question nobody raises in the interview. Legal and commercial load in a business of this size is lumpy: three intense weeks, then a quiet month. A permanent hire is paid for the quiet month. A retained function is scaled to the average and surges on the weeks that need it.
The honest counter-argument is presence. An employee sits in the room, absorbs context passively and is available at nine minutes' notice. That is a real advantage, and for businesses past a certain scale it eventually wins — which is why the sensible plan is a retained function now and a hire when the volume justifies one.
Until then the maths is not subtle: fifty to seventy per cent less, for the same judgement, with the specialist network already attached.
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