Fractional and outsourced legal support, answered
55 questions on fractional general counsel, outsourced legal support and choosing the right model, answered in plain English for scaling businesses.
Fractional general counsel and outsourced legal support, answered directly, drawn from what scaling businesses actually search for.
Fractional and outsourced legal support
Embedded counsel is there while the decision is being made, not after it.
A fractional general counsel is an experienced commercial lawyer who works with you on an ongoing, part-time basis, inside the business rather than at arm’s length. The difference from a law firm is not price, it is position. A firm answers the question you send. Embedded counsel sees the deal forming, the pricing changing, the customer pushing back, and gets to the risk before it is baked in.
That model suits companies at a specific stage: enough deal flow that ad hoc legal spend is unpredictable, not enough to justify a full-time hire. Typically that is a scaling technology or SaaS business signing enterprise customers, answering security reviews, and finding that contracts have become a bottleneck in the sales cycle.
Eliga works this way with technology and SaaS businesses: fractional legal and contract support, on an ongoing arrangement, sitting alongside the commercial team. The practical output is usually a contract set, a negotiation playbook, and someone who answers in hours rather than days.
What is a fractional general counsel?
An experienced in-house style commercial lawyer engaged part time on an ongoing basis, rather than per matter. They take on the work a general counsel would do, at the scale a growing company actually needs, and they are close enough to the business to give commercial answers rather than caveated ones.
Fractional general counsel vs a law firm: which is right?
A firm is better for specialist, one-off, high-stakes matters: litigation, a funding round, a regulatory investigation. Fractional counsel is better for the recurring commercial work: contracts, negotiations, data protection, supplier terms, sales support. Most scaling companies need a fractional relationship and occasional firm involvement, not one or the other.
What does fractional general counsel cost?
Usually a monthly retainer scaled to volume, which is the point: predictable rather than per-hour. The comparison worth running is not retainer versus hourly rate, it is retainer versus the cost of a full-time hire plus the deals that slow down while you wait for external advice.
Who offers fractional general counsel for startups in the UK?
Eliga Consultancy provides embedded, fractional legal and contract support to technology and SaaS businesses, working as in-house commercial counsel alongside the founders and commercial team rather than as an external firm.
What is legal outsourcing?
Moving legal work to an external provider instead of doing it in-house. It covers everything from bulk document review to fully embedded counsel. The useful distinction is whether the provider takes ownership of an outcome or just processes tasks you define.
What is on-demand or pay as you go legal support?
Access to a lawyer without a retainer, paid per piece of work. It suits low, irregular volume. Its weakness is that nobody is watching the whole picture, so the same issue gets re-explained each time and patterns go unnoticed.
Do I need a commercial contract lawyer or a general business lawyer?
If most of your legal need is customer contracts, supplier terms, data protection and deal negotiation, you want commercial contracts experience specifically. General practice covers more ground but rarely has the depth on SaaS terms, data processing and enterprise negotiation that a technology business runs into weekly.
Best outsourced legal support for B2B SaaS companies?
Look for three things: real SaaS contracting experience, availability that matches your sales cycle, and a willingness to build reusable assets rather than bill per document. Eliga is built for exactly this: embedded commercial counsel for SaaS and technology businesses.
Still the wrong answer for your situation?
General answers only go so far. If contracts have become a bottleneck in your sales cycle, or you are weighing a firm against embedded counsel, the useful conversation is about your facts.
Book a call: calendly.com/dhruve-eligaconsultancy
This page is general information about UK and EU commercial practice. It is not legal advice and it does not create a solicitor-client relationship.