Solutions
Virtual General Counsel
Senior, embedded legal support for growth businesses and in-house teams: experience at the right price point for you, without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire.
Senior legal leadership without the cost or commitment of a full-time hire
With Arbor Law, you get to partner with a senior lawyer with a Magic Circle or major international firm background and real GC experience inside large UK and international businesses, working with your leadership team on the calls that actually matter and at a daily rate an in-house hire of the same calibre cannot match. This experience matters, as some alternative VGC services are mis-selling their services, and do not have General Counsel experience.
Many businesses wait until legal complexity becomes a drag on momentum before bringing in senior support. Our Virtual General Counsel service can add greater value much earlier, helping your leadership team put the right frameworks in place for growth, approach investment and expansion from a stronger position, and avoid preventable issues becoming more costly later on.
What you get when you appoint a Virtual GC from Arbor
Senior in-house perspective, not just private-practice technique
Every Virtual GC at Arbor Law has both senior in-house experience, typically including board-level advisory work, and a serious private-practice background at a Magic Circle or major international firm. That means you get practical commercial judgement and up-to-date technical rigour in the same person: advice that is realistic, proportionate to the matter, and able to go deep when the issue calls for it.
An extension of your leadership team, not a supplier you have to manage
The value of a Virtual GC compounds as they learn the business: how decisions actually get made, where the pressure points sit, who the awkward stakeholders are, what the board cares about. Arbor Law is set up so your Virtual GC builds that familiarity quickly and contributes earlier, with sharper judgement, on the issues that actually matter to the leadership team.
Continuity that takes the friction out of legal input
Working with the same senior lawyer over time means you stop re-explaining the business at the start of every call. Legal input arrives faster, lands closer to the commercial picture, and the leadership team stops treating legal as something to route around when decisions need to move.
A commercial model that flexes with the business
You can engage us on a daily rate, a fixed-fee scope or a monthly retainer, and move between them as the business changes. A few days a month of strategic oversight is one shape; a more hands-on senior presence through a fundraise, an acquisition, a regulatory event or a period of rapid hiring is another. The buyer test we want you to apply: a senior lawyer of this calibre, on this commercial model, at a fraction of the all-in cost of an equivalent in-house hire.
Wider firm expertise without losing your single point of contact
Your Virtual GC remains your single point of contact, backed by the wider Arbor Law team. When a specialist input is needed, whether on a piece of employment work, data protection, a dispute, a regulatory question or a transaction, your Virtual GC pulls in the right person quickly and stays in the room, so nothing has to be re-briefed and nothing falls between two stools.
Hire-vs-rent: the decision the page is here to help with
The honest version of this conversation is straightforward. A permanent GC makes sense when the business has enough sustained legal volume and complexity to keep one fully occupied, when the leadership team wants a single name on the org chart with end-to-end ownership, and when the all-in cost of a senior hire (salary, bonus, equity, employer’s national insurance, pension, recruiter fee, on-costs) sits comfortably inside the budget you have for the function.
A Virtual GC makes sense when the legal volume is real but episodic, when you need senior judgement on the matters that matter rather than a full desk of work, when you want to keep the commercial model variable, or when you are not yet ready to commit to a permanent hire but cannot afford to keep routing every senior call to external counsel by the hour.
Plenty of growth businesses end up with a Virtual GC for two or three years and then hire one of our partners, or someone we help them find, when the work passes the threshold. We are comfortable with either outcome, and the first conversation is the right place to work out which is which.
What having a Virtual GC actually feels like
As a business scales, legal complexity scales with it. Contracts get more sophisticated, regulators take a closer interest, and commercial decisions carry larger legal and financial consequences. Without consistent senior input, legal questions start to slow the business down, drag leadership time onto the wrong things, and create avoidable friction at exactly the moments when the company needs to keep moving.
What having a Virtual GC actually feels like, in the week-to-week of running the business: the CEO stops carrying a list of half-answered legal questions in their head; the CFO has someone to call on the structuring of a deal before the term sheet goes back; the COO has someone reading the supplier contract before it lands on the desk for signature; the in-house lawyer (if there is one) has senior cover on the matters that are above their PQE and senior backup on the days they cannot be in two places at once. The legal function stops being a series of one-off external briefs and starts behaving like a function.
Because our lawyers have done both halves of the job, senior private practice at a Magic Circle or major international firm and a GC role inside a real business, they know the pressure that sits behind a commercial decision and the cost of a slow legal answer. The advice is clear, sized to the matter, and aligned to where the business is trying to get to, so legal support pulls the company forward rather than holding it back.
How it works
How a Virtual GC fits into your week
A Virtual GC gives the leadership team a single senior point of contact who knows the business, sits inside the commercial context and spots issues before they become a board problem. That continuity means decisions move faster, the leadership team stops carrying legal questions in the back of its head, and legal stops being something the executive routes around.
In practice, that means reviewing and negotiating the commercial agreements that move the numbers, taking the lead on governance and compliance work the board needs to see done properly, sitting alongside the CFO on a fundraise or strategic transaction, and running the contentious customer, partner or supplier negotiations that an in-house team without a GC tends to either avoid or over-pay external lawyers to handle.
Because your Virtual GC understands how the business actually runs, they spot legal and regulatory risk early and bring it back to the leadership team in a form that can be acted on, rather than as a memo that sits in someone’s inbox while the deal moves on without it.
Embedded support for your leadership team
A Virtual GC works best when embedded closely enough to understand how the business runs and to contribute at the right moments. Over time, your Virtual GC becomes a working member of the extended leadership team, in the room for the conversations that matter and contributing to decisions while there is still time to shape them. That continuity lets your Virtual GC build real familiarity with your products, your commercial objectives and your risk appetite, which is what makes the advice land faster and apply more cleanly.
If you already have an in-house lawyer or two, we sit alongside them rather than around them: senior depth on the matters that need it, additional capacity at the pressure points, and a permanent named partner the GC or head of legal can pick up the phone to.
Access to wider expertise when needed
Your Virtual GC remains your primary legal adviser, backed by the rest of the Arbor Law team. When a specialist input is needed, on data protection, intellectual property, employment, a dispute or a transaction, your Virtual GC pulls in the right partner quickly and stays close to the matter so nothing has to be re-briefed.
Where it is more efficient to bring in a trusted external specialist directly, your Virtual GC will do that too. The practical effect is that you get consistent senior legal leadership at the centre, with the bench of a full-service commercial firm behind it, on a commercial model that does not require you to carry that bench on your own balance sheet.
Flexible engagement that grows with you
Every business is different and the engagement is designed to adapt. Some clients want a couple of days a month of strategic input. Others want a more hands-on senior presence through a fundraise, an acquisition, a regulatory event or a stretch of rapid hiring.
The arrangement can move between those shapes as the business does. We structure the work on a daily rate, a fixed-fee scope or a monthly retainer, whichever fits the matter. The shared point across all three: senior legal advice on tap when you need it, on a commercial model that an equivalent in-house hire cannot match at the same calibre.
Get in touch today
If you are weighing whether to hire a GC, bring one in on a fractional basis, or do something in between for a defined period, send us a short note about where the business is and what is currently landing on the leadership team. One of us will come back to you personally, often the same day, to talk it through. The first conversation is on us, and if our honest answer is that you should hire a permanent GC rather than rent one from us, we will say so.
- +44 (0)20 7355 0540
- info@arbor.law
- 20 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE
