Fractional or part-time general counsel are increasingly in demand within a changing legal sector. In-House Perspective considers both the advantages and challenges of fractional GCs for both companies and for the lawyers themselves.

According to LexisNexis, by 2026, a third of all lawyers in the UK could be working as legal consultants. One branch of this consultancy market is making a name for itself in particular: the fractional or part-time general counsel (GC).

Once the preserve of a select number of C-suite roles, fractional work is a growing phenomenon in the legal sector. This shift reflects a wider transformation in the global labour market, where skills are valued over job titles and organisations seek resources that can flex to meet changing business needs.

The rise of such GCs mirrors the growth of other fractional senior roles that form part of managed strategic functions, such as chief finance officers (CFOs). But in the legal context, the upward trend is being driven by several converging pressures: tighter budgets, the rising cost of hiring permanent staff and the need for agility. With Forbes suggesting there could be payroll savings of 30–40 per cent, the fractional business model makes compelling financial sense.

The case for fractional working models is gaining urgency, driven by a looming global shortage of skilled workers. This, according to a Korn Ferry report published in 2018, will lead to more than 85 million unfilled roles and $8.5tn in unrealised annual revenue by 2030. This is creating fertile ground, then, for fractional talent, particularly in technology start-ups, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, venture capital and private equity, as well as professional services and consulting organisations.

The nature of a fractional GC

Fractional GCs are senior or highly experienced professionals with the skills to assume leadership roles in organisations. At the highest levels, they provide board-level guidance, anticipate legal risks and align their advice with business goals – all without the constraints of fixed employment.

They’re hired for a fraction of the work hours of a full-time GC, applying their legal expertise to the specific requirements of the businesses they serve. The role isn’t merely advisory – fractional GCs make decisions, lead teams and ensure strategies are executed.

Fractional leadership allows companies to access senior, global talent as they adapt to rapidly shifting markets. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 notes that organisations across sectors, from technology and healthcare to financial and professional services and the non-profit sector, are shifting towards skills-based work models. Fast-changing regulatory environments and the pressure to innovate without increasing overheads are leading organisations to adopt fractional leadership in order to remain nimble and compliant. This plays directly to the strengths of the fractional GC, who can deliver precisely what businesses need, when they need it.

Julian Hamblin, Senior Vice-Chair of the IBA Technology Law Committee, sees cost as a primary driver. This is, he says, ‘possibly why, in recent years, we have seen a growing interest in the supply of flexible, on-demand, fractional GCs in the UK’.

For small and medium-sized organisations, Hamblin explains, the cost of employing a full-time, experienced GC is often prohibitive. Recognising this shift, Trethowans, where Hamblin is a consultant practising technology law, offers ‘training for in-house legal counsel, together with flexible legal support via a dedicated client partner who builds a deep knowledge and understanding of the organisation and provides one point of contact and support’.

Paul Marmor, Co-Chair of the IBA Law Firm Management Committee, describes the rise of fractional GCs as underscoring ‘a transition from traditional legal departments to agile, hybrid models, blending in-house leadership with on-demand external expertise’. He highlights that using fractional GCs makes business sense, providing access to flexible leadership and specialist support while avoiding an increase in fixed overheads.

Marmor, who’s a partner at Sherrards Solicitors, also draws a distinction between interim and fractional GCs. The former work on specific projects on a fixed-term basis, while fractional GCs provide flexible, long-term strategic support.

Strategic leadership and deep expertise

Funke Abimbola MBE, a fractional general counsel at The Legal Director, explains that ‘as a fractional GC, I often act as a connector between leadership, external counsel, and internal teams, bridging legal, compliance and governance perspectives’.

After two decades in senior in-house legal leadership roles, Abimbola moved into fractional GC work and has observed growing interest from company founders and chief executive officers (CEOs) seeking strategic legal support early in the business life cycle. Her clients typically include scale-ups and mid-sized companies in sectors such as technology, life sciences and education.

The common thread is that they’re experiencing significant change, such as mergers, international expansion or regulatory shifts. Abimbola helps these companies navigate complex international commercial contracts, manage legal and regulatory risk during rapid growth, support cross-border M&A or investment activity, build or strengthen in-house legal functions and align legal strategy with business objectives.

In all cases, her clients want high-calibre advice without committing to a full-time hire. ‘I bring C-suite experience, but on a scalable basis, which is ideal for companies in transition,’ she says.

Donna Sewell, CEO at LegalEdge, offers another perspective. She argues that fractional GCs allow high-growth companies that aren’t yet ready for a full-time legal hire to access strategic support. Most of her clients, she says, come without any internal legal provision. ‘They may be using a law firm that helped with their fundraising round or that their VC [venture capital company] recommended, along with some basic templates, some AI and often relying on the founder or CFO to manage legal as well as their own jobs,’ she explains.

This approach, she warns, introduces risk and slows down growth or sales cycles. When she launched her fractional GC company in 2009, during a time when ‘the only option for growing businesses to obtain legal support was to outsource to often expensive law firm specialists’, there was little awareness of alternative models. Her client roster has since grown to include start-ups across tech, media, fast-moving consumer goods, retail and professional services, and she sees clear demand for both strategic input and transactional support. ‘Fractional leaders bring deep expertise without the full-time overhead and when supported with the right operational stack – especially people, tech and process – they become indispensable,’ says Sewell.

Organisational advantages and challenges

Marmor identifies multiple advantages for organisations engaging fractional GCs. For start- and scale-ups, the model provides day-to-day legal oversight, fundraising counsel, intellectual property protection and preparation for growth or exit – all without the cost of a full-time GC.

Mid-market companies can access strategic legal input to manage risk, contracts, recruitment and regulatory issues. In regulated industries such as Fintech, financial services, healthcare and protective equipment, fractional GCs bring expertise in regards to compliance frameworks including the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as well as anti-money laundering and securities laws.

Flexibility is another major benefit. Organisations can scale legal support up or down in response to business needs, for example during growth phases or when working on special projects.

Because fractional GCs often work across multiple sectors, they bring fresh, strategic perspectives and can cross-pollinate new methods and ideas. Marmor says that ‘top tier fractional GCs can operate at the same strategic level as full-time GCs – providing board-level guidance, anticipating legal risks and aligning business goals’. In smaller companies, they can function as a one-stop shop for legal matters.

Hamblin says that over time, fractional GCs may develop a significant corporate history with a client. When such an arrangement ends, the company must ensure that the knowledge built up over time isn’t lost. This may be easier to achieve where the fractional GC is part of a team of lawyers, or where clear handover protocols are established and agreed by both parties in advance.

‘A fractional GC works as an extension of the company’s operations team, so gets to know the business quickly and prioritises what’s important, focusing on reducing key risks and proactively managing legal strategy, workflow and budget, using the right people, processes and tech,’ says Sewell. This approach makes the appeal of fractional GCs obvious, but like any business model, it comes with challenges and understanding what those are is crucial before committing to the approach.

Marmor highlights the potential limitations of working with fractional GCs, for example limited availability, which can restrict responsiveness and ongoing engagement. He suggests that establishing a structured retainer or fixed-fee approach could mitigate this issue. He adds that fractional GCs who are knowledgeable about a variety of sectors may lack specific, in-depth knowledge in the particular areas a business requires and, being external, they might not have a nuanced or deeper understanding of the organisation, its culture and how it operates.

He further explains that having fewer clients could deepen a fractional GC’s commitment to a single organisation but admits this would expose them to financial risk in the event that such a client relationship was to end. Marmor understands that, in an effort to spread risk, fractional GCs can and do choose to work with a range of clients.

Hamblin says a practitioner who’s substantially devoted to one company over an extended period of time – even though it’s on a fractional basis – may find it challenging to manage their other clients effectively.

Confidentiality and conflicts of interest demand particular attention. Working for multiple clients could potentially increase the likelihood of conflicts arising. Effective conflict-checking processes, consistent record-keeping and well-structured information barriers are critical. This would include legal compliance and taking steps to build trust and credibility. Similarly, confidentiality obligations must be observed to the highest standards, supported by secure document management and communication practices that reflect both professional rules and client expectations.

Regulatory obligations are a further consideration. They include holding and maintaining the correct licences, meeting bar and other requirements and ensuring adequate professional indemnity insurance is obtained for the type and volume of work being undertaken. For those working across multiple jurisdictions, understanding local restrictions on practice, or, for example, in regards to collaboration with locally qualified lawyers is essential to avoid inadvertently straying outside of permitted activity.

From partnership to independence

For some lawyers, fractional work offers liberation from the constraints of the traditional life at a firm. Dawn Stallwood, Leadership Counsel and GC Support at Floodlight Business, left partnership in 2010 to run her own consultancy. She was driven by a desire to focus on what she enjoys – ‘working closely with clients on commercial projects, bids and their M&A/corporate development activity’ – as well as a wish to be involved earlier on in deals, something she was unable to do before working for herself, as her partner rates were prohibitive.

Stallwood describes her fractional GC role as one of demystifying legal services and optimising the use of external firms to avoid poorly timed or under-informed instructions. She sees herself as someone who is ‘standing in the gap’ to ‘help with the relationship and project management, ensuring everyone is and remains clear about the objective, so that it becomes a shared objective’. In her view, GC support ‘should involve strategic input, influence and viability otherwise it’s just “a gig” and you don’t move the dial’. She also sees part of her role as ensuring that legal instructions work in the best way for the client, avoiding wasted time and miscommunication.

Having worked fractionally since 2010, she values the variety of clients and sectors they operate within. She says the model allows her ‘to build working relationships which feel less transactional – you get behind the business plan and mission’, working with both management and senior leadership teams. Some relationships are long-standing, while others are more intense and project-based.

Managing multiple clients

Fractional GCs face a range of ethical and professional challenges, including in respect of client acquisition, workload balance, confidentiality, potential conflicts of interest and ensuring compliance with regulatory duties, insurance requirements and any jurisdiction-specific practice restrictions. While these are familiar considerations for most experienced lawyers, the fractional model often heightens them because of the variety of clients, the non-exclusive nature of engagements and the need to work across different organisational cultures. Stallwood believes there’s no substitute for experience and that ‘coming from a regional all-rounder firm in my consulting role, having had 12 years experience, worked for me.  I’m not sure I would step into fractional or consulting without a solid foundation’.

Client acquisition isn’t simply a case of securing instructions. It’s about knowing how to market and price services effectively, particularly in a competitive and evolving field. Fractional GCs need to demonstrate value and rapid impact across several clients, sometimes in very different sectors, and must be proactive in identifying and anticipating the needs of the companies they work for. They must deliver strategic and commercial input that goes beyond legal advice, whilst maintaining a client base that’ll ensure both stability of income and reduce the need to be overly-reliant on a single client relationship. Business development, networking and maintaining a visible professional profile become essential parts of the role.

Workload balance requires careful judgement. One of the attractions of fractional GC work is the flexibility it offers, but without discipline it can be easy to overcommit. This can lead to excessive hours, competing deadlines and ultimately a risk to service quality. The challenge is to remain flexible to client needs without exceeding capacity. This means knowing when to say no, setting clear boundaries and managing peaks and troughs in demand so that each client receives the level of attention and responsiveness they expect. To this end, ‘time management and expectation-setting are essential,’ says Abimbola. ‘I’m clear upfront about availability, priorities and ways of working.’

The road ahead

There are many opportunities connected to the evolution of technology. For example, Stallwood highlights a shift from general instructions to specialist and expert work, and says that while the legal sector is a late adopter of AI, a number of the in-house teams she provides notary services or facilitation for are actively trialling or building their own large language models (LLMs).

According to FRAK, the in-person conference for fractional executives, there were 60,000 fractional leaders in 2022, with that number doubling to 120,000 in 2024. Against this backdrop, fractional GC work is thriving, and for good reason. When resources are limited, and risk mitigation and actionable legal advice are the priorities, the value of fractional GCs is being increasingly recognised.

Marmor sees legal leadership structures potentially evolving into more hybrid models. ‘Businesses might embrace more hybrid legal teams – a core counsel enhanced by a fractional GC providing strategic oversight,’ he says. He predicts there will be a shift in the skills required, with fractional GCs needing to go beyond traditional legal expertise by developing entrepreneurial capabilities, business development skills, client management experience and legal tech fluency to succeed in the future. Sewell shares similar views and believes that ‘flexible, portfolio-style legal careers will become the norm, not the exception’.

The rise of the fractional GC reflects permanent shifts in how businesses operate – from remote-first cultures to demand for specialised expertise without full-time overhead costs. This model highlights the convergence of organisational needs for strategic legal counsel and the desire of experienced lawyers for independent, multi-client careers.