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.
Deciding · Part of Outsourced General Counsel
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. That retained function is what a fractional General Counsel is: the same seniority, bought by the part of the week the business needs.
Until then the maths is not subtle: fifty to seventy per cent less, for the same judgement, with the specialist network already attached.
More: Deciding
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