The stage this usually fits
Companies reach out when the pattern becomes familiar: a contract queue sitting on someone's desk for a week, employee questions nobody wants to answer from a template, investors asking for board minutes that were never written, and customer agreements signed because a deal is waiting. None of these is an emergency on its own. Together they are a job. A fractional general counsel takes on that recurring work under a standing arrangement rather than matter by matter, so the person handling it already knows your contracts, your ownership structure, and your team.
What the role tends to cover
In most engagements the work settles into a few streams: reviewing and negotiating the agreements that come through regularly, keeping corporate records and governance current, handling employment and policy questions as they arise, and being the person your team can ask before making a decision rather than after. It also means recognizing when a matter belongs with a firm that handles that area regularly, and coordinating the handoff. What it is not is a substitute for a full-time in-house team once the volume genuinely supports one. We will tell you when the work has grown to that point rather than letting the arrangement drift.
Getting started
Before the first conversation, pull together the agreements you use repeatedly, your formation and ownership documents, and a rough list of the questions that have been sitting unanswered. It helps to know who inside the company will be the point of contact and roughly how much of a week you expect the work to take. We will talk about which streams to take on first, what stays with you, and how the arrangement gets reviewed as the company changes. Starting narrow and widening later usually works better than the reverse.
