OutsourcedGeneral Counsel.
An outsourced General Counsel is a senior commercial lawyer who does the work an in-house General Counsel would do — contracts, disputes, governance and deals — on a fixed monthly fee rather than a salary. Dinmore Bell provides that function to founder-led businesses in the UK and UAE, owning each matter end to end.
The senior legal and commercial mind every growing business needs — embedded in your leadership team, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire. We own the work, not just the advice.
What your General Counsel actually does
Four things, owned rather than advised on.
A General Counsel is not a lawyer you ask questions of. It is the person accountable for the legal and commercial exposure of the business, which is a different job and a different relationship.
Contracts & commercial
Drafting, negotiating and managing the agreements that run your business — and owning every renewal, break and review so value never leaks. Customer terms, supplier agreements, distribution, licensing, employment, and the framework contracts underneath them. Most businesses do not lose money on the contract they argued over. They lose it on the one nobody read before signing, the auto-renewal nobody diarised, and the liability cap that went unnegotiated because the deal was urgent. We hold the whole contract estate in one place, know what is in it, and tell you what it commits you to while you can still change it.
Disputes & problem-solving
When suppliers, customers or counterparties become a problem, we step in and resolve it commercially — keeping you out of court wherever possible. That means taking the correspondence off your desk on the day it turns difficult, working out what the outcome is genuinely worth, and pursuing that rather than the argument. Most commercial disputes are settled by whoever is better prepared and less emotional about it. We can be both, because it is not our business being attacked. Where a matter truly needs regulated conduct, we instruct specialists and stay accountable for the result.
Governance & regulatory
Board and corporate housekeeping, regulatory questions, banking and compliance — handled quietly and properly, so the business stays clean. Share registers that match reality, minutes that exist, filings made on time, and a data position that survives a customer’s due diligence questionnaire. None of this wins a week. All of it decides what happens when an investor, a lender or an acquirer asks to see the file — and fixing it at that point, under time pressure and in front of the other side, costs many times what keeping it right would have.
Deals, growth & protection
New revenue, partnerships, transactions and expansion — structured and executed — plus protecting the IP and value you have built. Joint ventures, reseller and agency arrangements, funding rounds, acquisitions, and entering new markets. The protective half matters as much as the ambitious one: knowing that the code, the brand and the customer data your business runs on are owned by the company, and not by a founder, a contractor or an agency that built something years ago. Ownership assumed is ownership unproven, and it gets tested at precisely the wrong moment.
When a business needs one
When a business needs one.
Few businesses decide they need a General Counsel. What happens instead is that the absence of one starts costing money, usually in one of five ways. If more than one of these is familiar, the question is no longer whether to fix it.
Contracts get signed before anyone reads them
The deal is urgent, the terms arrive as a PDF the night before, and somebody signs rather than hold it up. That works until the one that mattered.
A dispute is eating the founder’s week
The most expensive hour in a growing business belongs to the person running it, and a difficult counterparty will take as many of them as you let them have.
Someone has asked to see the contract file
An investor, a lender, an acquirer or your largest customer. What they find, and how quickly you can produce it, moves the number and the timetable.
Nobody can say who owns what
The code, the brand, the customer data. Recorded properly at the time it costs nothing. Reconstructed years later, against a deadline, it costs a great deal.
You are moving into something new
A new market, a regulated product, a first international customer. The obligations change on the day you start, and nobody in the building yet knows how.
The case for outsourcing
Senior counsel, without the senior salary.
The right comparison is not our fee against a law firm’s hourly rate. It is our fee against the fully-loaded cost of the senior hire you would otherwise make.
£175k–£310k
Fully-loaded annual cost of a full-time General Counsel in the UK
50–70%
Typical saving versus that hire, with Dinmore Bell
From £1,500
Per month — embedded counsel and contract management, no overhead
How we are different
Built by entrepreneurs — not a law firm.
We avoid litigation by design
Court is the most expensive way to be right. We resolve commercially wherever the outcome allows, and we say so before the costs start rather than after. A firm paid by the hour has no structural reason to tell you a dispute is worth settling early; we are paid a fixed monthly fee, so a matter that drags is our problem as much as yours. That alignment is the whole point. We will tell you when a fight is worth having, and we will tell you just as plainly when winning it costs more than losing it.
We control the specialists
When regulated or specialist work is genuinely needed, we coordinate our bank of trusted advisers and manage them — so costs stay controlled and everything is translated back into a commercial decision. You brief us once. We choose who is right for the matter, agree the scope and the fee before it starts, hold them to both, and read what comes back. What reaches you is not a twelve-page advice note; it is what that note means and what we suggest you do about it. The range of an in-house function, without having to assemble one.
Discretion is the product
We hold our clients’ confidences absolutely and never name who we act for. That discretion is exactly why founders trust us with what matters most. There is no client list on this website and there will not be one. The problems that reach us are often the ones a founder has not yet raised with their board, their investors or their co-founder — a dispute with the largest customer, a falling-out over ownership, a letter from a regulator. Work of that kind only ever arrives if the person bringing it is certain it goes no further.
Where specialists come in
Depth without a standing team.
Dinmore Bell operates as a retained legal, commercial and corporate affairs function and does not undertake reserved legal activities. We do not conduct litigation and have no rights of audience. Where regulated advice or proceedings are required, we instruct and control the appropriate specialists, hold the budget, and remain accountable for the commercial outcome.
Against the alternatives
Four ways to solve this. What each actually gives you.
The choice is rarely between us and nothing. It is between four models with genuinely different economics, and the differences are easier to see side by side than argued.
| What is being compared | Dinmore Bell | Law firm retainer | In-house General Counsel | Sole fractional GC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Fixed monthly fee from £1,500. The same whether the month is quiet or difficult. | Hourly, and highest in the months you can least afford it. | £175k–£310k a year fully loaded, once salary, employer National Insurance, pension, benefits and recruitment are counted. | A day rate or a share of a week, fixed against time rather than outcome. |
| Who owns the work | We do. Problems arrive at you solved, not reported. | You do. The firm answers the question you brought and hands it back. | They do, within the hours one person has. | They do, within the days you have bought. |
| Depth on a specialist matter | A coordinated bank of specialists, briefed and managed by us, on scope and fee agreed before they start. | Genuine depth, billed at the specialist’s rate and managed by you. | One person’s expertise, plus whatever they choose to instruct. | One person’s expertise. Depth is the known limit of the model. |
| Availability | A function rather than a person: it does not stop for holiday or another client. | Available when instructed, at the pace of an engagement letter. | Full time, and a single point of failure. | The share of the week you bought, and no more. |
| Jurisdictions | UK and UAE under one function, briefed once. | Usually one, with local counsel instructed separately and billed separately. | Wherever that person is qualified. | Wherever that person is qualified. |
| Regulated work | Instructed and controlled by us; we hold the budget and stay accountable for the outcome. | Conducted directly. | Instructed by them. | Instructed by them, or by you. |
Dinmore Bell
- Cost
- Fixed monthly fee from £1,500. The same whether the month is quiet or difficult.
- Who owns the work
- We do. Problems arrive at you solved, not reported.
- Depth on a specialist matter
- A coordinated bank of specialists, briefed and managed by us, on scope and fee agreed before they start.
- Availability
- A function rather than a person: it does not stop for holiday or another client.
- Jurisdictions
- UK and UAE under one function, briefed once.
- Regulated work
- Instructed and controlled by us; we hold the budget and stay accountable for the outcome.
Law firm retainer
- Cost
- Hourly, and highest in the months you can least afford it.
- Who owns the work
- You do. The firm answers the question you brought and hands it back.
- Depth on a specialist matter
- Genuine depth, billed at the specialist’s rate and managed by you.
- Availability
- Available when instructed, at the pace of an engagement letter.
- Jurisdictions
- Usually one, with local counsel instructed separately and billed separately.
- Regulated work
- Conducted directly.
In-house General Counsel
- Cost
- £175k–£310k a year fully loaded, once salary, employer National Insurance, pension, benefits and recruitment are counted.
- Who owns the work
- They do, within the hours one person has.
- Depth on a specialist matter
- One person’s expertise, plus whatever they choose to instruct.
- Availability
- Full time, and a single point of failure.
- Jurisdictions
- Wherever that person is qualified.
- Regulated work
- Instructed by them.
Sole fractional GC
- Cost
- A day rate or a share of a week, fixed against time rather than outcome.
- Who owns the work
- They do, within the days you have bought.
- Depth on a specialist matter
- One person’s expertise. Depth is the known limit of the model.
- Availability
- The share of the week you bought, and no more.
- Jurisdictions
- Wherever that person is qualified.
- Regulated work
- Instructed by them, or by you.
What it costs
Published, because almost nobody publishes it.
A fee you have to ask for is a fee that starts the relationship with a negotiation. Ours is on the page, and the Scope Analysis confirms which tier a business actually needs.
Foundation
Your contracts, managed. Counsel on demand.
- Full contract lifecycle management
- Capped legal and commercial questions
- Drafting and review from our playbooks
- Monthly strategic call
Embedded
Most engagedYour outsourced legal and commercial function.
- Everything in Foundation, uncapped
- Active matter ownership and negotiation
- Management of your legal@ inbox
- Governance, regulatory and banking
- Coordination of specialists
Counsel
By invitationOutsourced GC and Founder Office.
- Everything in Embedded, bespoke
- Senior-led strategic and board support
- M&A, transactions and expansion
- White-label under your brand
Bespoke
Scoped to the briefA function built to a brief that no tier describes.
- Custom recovery and dunning systems, built on our platform
- A named compliance officer inside your business
- Company set-up and licensing across the corridor
- Project frameworks for a raise, an entry or a disposal
- Workflow and reporting design for an existing in-house team
We don’t bring an ego. We win.
Sam Ansloos · Managing Partner
Read further
Deciding
- How much an outsourced General Counsel costs in the UKThe buying question, answered structurally rather than with a number: what sits inside a fixed monthly retainer, what is billed separately, what an employed lawyer costs once the salary stops being the whole figure, and the three points at which the arithmetic flips.
- Fractional General CounselFractional general counsel: a senior lawyer two days a week. Not a firm, and not a £150,000 hire.
- Your First In-House Lawyer After a PE Buy-In: What the Job Spec Doesn't SayWhen a private equity sponsor backs a healthcare business and creates a Head of Legal role reporting to the CFO, the job spec is usually the smallest part of the job. Here's what to scope before that person starts — and how to cover the gap until they do.
- What an In-House Lawyer Really Costs in the UKSalary is the number on the offer letter. It is not the number that lands on the P&L. Here is the arithmetic a founder needs before signing off a first legal hire.
- When to Hire a General Counsel: The Maths at 30, 100 and 300 StaffFounders 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.
- First Legal Hire for a UK Startup: In-House Lawyer, Retainer, or Outsourced GC?Founders usually frame this as a choice between hiring someone and finding a law firm. There's a third option most arrive at eventually — an outsourced General Counsel function — and it's worth weighing all three before signing anything.
- Fractional or full-time General Counsel: who it suits and when to switchFounders searching for a fractional General Counsel are usually trying to avoid two bad options: an expensive full-time hire they don't yet need, or a law firm relationship that only turns up when there's a bill attached. Here's what the model actually is.
- What a fully loaded General Counsel actually costsThe comparison is not our fee against an hourly rate. It is our fee against the hire you would otherwise make.
Problems, in order
- The liability cap you agreed at pilot scaleThe number that looked generous on a trial is the number that decides the worst day at volume. Reading the cap, the carve-outs and the insurance together is what changes the answer.
- Late payment: what you can actually chargeOn a commercial debt the law already gives you interest and a fixed sum towards recovery costs, whether or not your contract mentions them. Almost nobody claims either, which is why late payment costs your customer nothing.
- Who owns the work your freelancers made?You paid the invoice, so you assume you own the logo, the code and the photographs. The default rule says otherwise, and the gap usually surfaces at the worst possible moment: due diligence.
- When a supplier goes under owing you goodsAdministration is a change of control, not a pause, and the administrator has no duty to finish your order. What decides your recovery is a narrower question than most buyers expect: on the day, did the goods belong to you?
- The contract auto-renewed and nobody noticedThe notice window is the operative term, not the length of the contract. What a business can realistically do once the window has closed, and how a register stops it happening twice.
- The service charge on a second site: what to cap before you signIt arrives quarterly, it gets paid, and on one site nobody notices. On two it compounds, because the same drafting sits in both leases and neither was read at the point it could still have been changed.
- The first ninety days after a raise: what changes on paperThe money arrives and the company is suddenly a different legal object: it has investors with rights, a board that has to decide things properly, and a set of promises about ownership it may not be able to keep. What has to exist, in what order, and what can wait.
- Who owns the code your contractor wrote?Paying the invoice does not buy the copyright. What the default position is, why a clause in an email will not carry it, and what to do when the person who built your product left three years ago.
- The service charge demand: what a commercial tenant can actually challengeIt arrives as a certificate with a figure on it and looks final. It is an account of how a contractual mechanism has been applied, and accounts can be wrong.
- Four advisers, four jurisdictions, and nobody holding the listA family office rarely lacks good advisers. What it lacks is one person who can say, on any given morning, what is outstanding across all of them — and the standing to go and chase it.
- The rent review you did not diaryThe letter proposes a number and gives you a short period to respond. Everything that decides how much room you have was settled years earlier, in a clause nobody has read since.
- Your business rates bill went up. What you can actually challengeThe bill is a calculation, and the calculation is rarely the thing that is wrong. The rateable value underneath it is, and that is the part that can be challenged.
- Your business rates bill is wrong: what a challenge actually involvesA rateable value is an opinion, and opinions can be wrong. What the Check, Challenge and Appeal process asks of a business, how long it really takes, and how to work out whether it is worth running at all.
- Service charges in a commercial lease: what a tenant can actually challengeThe rent is negotiated and the service charge is not, which is why over a ten-year term it is often the number that moves most. Three grounds decide almost every dispute, and disliking the total is not one of them.
- The family office register: what one document should tell youMost family offices have good advisers in four jurisdictions and no single place where the entities, the dates and the obligations sit together. The register is that place, and the test of it is whether anybody can say what is outstanding without making a phone call.
- A winding-up petition has been served: the first seven daysThe petition is the most serious letter a company receives, and the week after it lands is mostly about protecting the things that keep trading possible: the bank account, the supply chain, and the contracts that treat insolvency as a trigger.
- When the lease runs out: renewal, and who controls the timingA protected business tenancy does not end on the date written in the lease. It ends when somebody serves the right notice — and the side that serves first controls the timetable, the terms and, usually, the rent.
- Your first legal hire: what the job actually isThe work arrives long before the budget does. What the role actually involves, what a single hire can and cannot absorb, and how to tell which of the three routes your business needs.
- The dilapidations schedule at the end of a lease: what you actually oweIt is itemised, it looks official, and the number at the bottom bears no relation to the building you occupied. It is a claim for damages, and the statute caps it at the landlord’s loss rather than the cost of the works.
- When a customer stops paying: the order of thingsA good customer going quiet on an invoice is a different problem from a bad customer refusing to pay. There is an order to working out which one you have, and it starts with the contract rather than the phone.
- Your supplier contract renewed itself. Now what?The auto-renewal clause is three lines long and sits near the back. It decides whether you are committed for another twelve months, and most businesses read it the week after the window shut.
- Buying an AI tool: the contract questions that actually matterThe demo answers what the tool does. The contract answers what happens to your data, who owns the output, and who carries the cost when the model is confidently wrong.
- Fair maintainable trade: how your rent and rateable value get decidedTwo of the largest fixed costs in a pub, hotel or leisure business are set by an estimate of what a competent operator could earn from the building. Not what you earn. What the assessor believes the property can sustain.
- Drawing down a growth facility: what the covenants actually restrictThe term sheet was about the money. The facility agreement is about everything you must keep doing, and everything you may no longer do without asking, for as long as the money is outstanding.
- When does a founder-led business need a holding company?One company works for years, until a raise, a second business line or a departing co-founder makes it the wrong shape. A holding company solves a specific set of problems well, and several others not at all.
- When a Customer Will Not Pay: Recovering a B2B Debt in the UKNinety days late, no reply, and a growing suspicion that chasing it costs more than it is worth. The order you do things in decides whether you get paid.
- Who Owns the Code Your Contractors Wrote?Most founders assume paying for work means owning it. In UK law that is true of employees and false of contractors, and the gap usually surfaces in diligence.
- The first ninety days after a seed round closesThe wire clears and the congratulations arrive. Underneath them sits a list of obligations that started running the day the documents were signed, and most of it lands on the founder.
- Can a housing association sue you for building safety defects years later?The Building Safety Act reopened claims most contractors had written off as time-barred. Thirty years is not a typographical error, and the corporate structure that used to absorb the risk no longer does.
- Can You Appeal an Energy Ombudsman Decision?There is no appeal button inside the Energy Ombudsman scheme. What you have instead is a choice — accept, or reject and go elsewhere — and the deadline for making it is shorter than most people think.
- Your Energy Supplier Billed You Wrong: The Business Dispute Route That Actually WorksA wrong energy bill is a cash-flow problem dressed up as paperwork. Here's the escalation ladder — complaint, deadlock, Ombudsman, recovery — and the deadlines that decide whether the money comes back at all.
- Served a Winding-Up Petition? What Hospitality Operators Need to Do in the First 7 DaysA winding-up petition is not a stern letter to be filed with the invoices. It can freeze the bank account within days and put the business in front of a liquidator within weeks — and most of what can be done about it has to happen in the first week.
- How to Get People to Pay: Structured Recovery Beats AggressionChasing harder rarely collects faster. A fixed escalation calendar, statutory interest applied by default and an honest decision point do — and they cost less.
- Business Rates Are a Turnover Tax on Hospitality — How to Run a Challenge That Actually WinsFor pubs, hotels and much of the licensed trade, the rateable value is derived from trade. That makes rates behave like a tax on turnover — payable whether or not the site makes money. Here is how a challenge is won, and what has to be in place before the Challenge button is pressed.
- Nobody Kept the Share Register: Who Owns What When Two Founders Fall OutA cap table lives in three places — the register of members, the Companies House file and everyone's memory. Only the first one decides ownership in law, and most founder-led companies have never written it up.
- The adjudication you cannot useAdjudication is the fast lane for getting paid on a build — until it isn't. Four contract facts decide whether the lane is open, and all four are knowable before you serve a notice.
- Where nine per cent of your revenue goesContract value rarely leaks in a single expensive event. It leaks quietly, through renewal dates nobody owns.
- The letter before action, and what it actually buys youMost disputes are settled by the quality of the first letter, not by the threat at the end of it.
- Your break clause is a deadline, not an optionMost break clauses fail on a condition nobody read, not on a decision anyone took.
Sam Ansloos
Managing Partner
Barrister-trained, with ten years of legal work that started in-house as General Counsel for an international manufacturing company. In-house nobody thanks you for the analysis; they ask whether it is closed. From 2020 he founded and built businesses of his own — automotive, leisure and hospitality, real estate and blockchain — taking them to eight figures, and ran the legal function across all of them himself. Doing it himself saved him hundreds of thousands in fees. That is where the frustration came from. Lawyers who answered a direct question with you could do this, or you could do that, and left the decision, the risk and the work with him. He wanted a solution that week, from someone who would then go and execute it. As the companies scaled he found himself thinking he could just do with one person to take the legal work and the firefighting off his desk. Nobody was selling that. Dinmore Bell is the firm he wanted to hire.
- LLB (Hons), University of Law
- Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC), University of Law
- LLM Master of Laws, University of Law
- What is an outsourced General Counsel?
- An outsourced General Counsel is a senior legal and commercial function retained by a business instead of employed by it. Dinmore Bell owns the contracts, disputes, governance and deals a General Counsel would own, coordinates regulated specialists where a matter needs them, and charges a monthly retainer rather than an hourly rate.
- What is an outsourced lawyer?
- A senior lawyer who works for your business on a retained basis, rather than as an employee or as a law firm billing by the hour. An outsourced General Counsel is the most senior form of it: someone who owns the legal and commercial exposure of the business, not just the questions sent to them. Dinmore Bell provides it on a fixed monthly fee from £1,500.
- How does the cost compare with hiring a General Counsel?
- A full-time General Counsel in the UK costs roughly £175,000 to £310,000 a year once salary, employer National Insurance, pension, benefits and recruitment are counted. A retained function typically costs 50 to 70 per cent less, and brings a coordinated bank of specialists rather than one person’s expertise.
- Are you a law firm?
- No. Dinmore Bell operates as a retained legal, commercial and corporate affairs function and does not undertake reserved legal activities. We do not conduct litigation and have no rights of audience. Where regulated advice or proceedings are needed, we instruct and control specialists and remain accountable for the outcome.
- What does an engagement start with?
- A Scope Analysis. We read the contracts, list the live risks, and set out in writing what we would take on, what stays with you, what needs a specialist and what it costs. You keep the written scope whether or not we go ahead.
- When does a business need a General Counsel?
- Usually somewhat before it thinks it does. The most common trigger is simply volume — enough contracts, suppliers and customers that no one person still holds the whole picture. The others are structural: a first institutional investor, an acquisition, a regulated product, or a dispute that will not resolve itself. If the founder is the person reading the contracts, the business has already passed the point.
- How is this different from a fractional General Counsel?
- A fractional General Counsel is generally one experienced lawyer selling a share of their week. That can work well, but it remains one person’s expertise and one person’s availability. Dinmore Bell is a function rather than an individual: a team that holds the contract estate, coordinates specialists where a matter needs them, and does not pause because somebody is on holiday or busy with another client.
- How is it different from instructing a law firm?
- A law firm answers the question you bring it, bills for the time that takes, and hands the work back to you. We take ownership instead: we hold the contracts, watch the renewals, raise the problem before you have noticed it, and charge the same whether the month is quiet or difficult. Where reserved legal work is required, we instruct a firm and manage it on your behalf.
- What size of business do you work with?
- Founder-led businesses that have outgrown ad-hoc legal help but cannot yet justify a full-time senior hire. Headcount matters less than shape: private ownership, decisions made by a small group, and a contract load that has grown faster than anyone planned for. If you are wondering whether you are too small, the Scope Analysis will tell you honestly — including when the answer is not yet.
- Do you work outside the UK?
- Yes. We are based in the UK and have a presence in Dubai, and we act for businesses trading internationally from both. Where a matter needs local regulated advice, we instruct and manage counsel in that jurisdiction on the same basis as we do at home: you brief us once, and we remain accountable for the commercial outcome.