What Is a Fractional General Counsel?
A fractional GC gives your company senior legal judgment on a flexible retainer — without the cost of a full-time hire. Here's how it works and who it's for.
The Problem With Traditional Legal Counsel
Most growth-stage companies face the same dilemma: they need serious legal support, but they’re not ready to hire a $250,000+ General Counsel. The alternative — calling outside counsel on an hourly basis — is expensive, reactive, and disconnected from the business.
The result is that most founders either overpay for sporadic advice or underpay and take on legal risk they don’t fully understand.
What a Fractional GC Actually Does
A fractional General Counsel is an experienced attorney who acts as your in-house legal counsel on a part-time or monthly retainer basis. They attend your key meetings, review your contracts, manage outside counsel when needed, and give you the same quality of advice a Fortune 500 company gets from its legal department — without the full-time price tag.
At Lovable Law, our fractional GC engagements are structured as monthly retainers. You get a defined number of hours, priority response time, and a lawyer who actually knows your business.
Who It’s For
Fractional GC services work best for:
- Series A and B startups that are signing complex vendor agreements, hiring senior employees, and fielding investor questions regularly
- Bootstrapped companies that have grown past the “we’ll just use a template” stage
- Founders preparing for a fundraise who need someone to clean up the cap table and review the term sheet
- Companies with recurring contract volume — if you’re signing five or more contracts a month, a retainer is almost always cheaper than hourly
What It Costs
Our fractional GC retainer is $3,500 per month for 10 hours of senior attorney coverage. Unused hours roll over to the next month. There are no long-term commitments — month-to-month.
Compare that to the hourly alternative: at $450/hour, 10 hours of work costs $4,500 on an as-needed basis — and you lose the continuity of a lawyer who knows your business.
The AI Advantage
We use AI tools to work faster and more thoroughly than a traditional firm. That means better contract reviews in less time, and more hours left in the retainer for the strategic work that actually matters.
If you’re past product-market fit and finding that legal is becoming a bottleneck, a fractional GC is worth the conversation.