Solutions
General Counsel Solutions
Senior legal leadership built around the business: a Virtual or Fractional General Counsel where the seat needs filling, or embedded senior capacity where it needs scaling, delivered by lawyers who have sat in the seat themselves.
Senior legal leadership built around the business
Modern businesses need more than reactive legal advice. They need senior legal leadership that takes commercial decisions, manages risk through judgement rather than only research, and integrates into the rhythm of the business as it grows. Most businesses that are scaling, regulated or operating across jurisdictions cannot justify a full in-house team to do that. The buy-versus-build calculation rarely comes out cleanly: a panel firm owns the work but not the strategy, an in-house hire is sound long-term but expensive in year one, and a consultancy can run the operational side but cannot do the legal work.
Arbor’s General Counsel Solutions sit in the space the three traditional options leave open. We provide senior legal leadership on the terms the business actually needs: a Virtual GC running across regulatory, corporate, employment and governance; a Fractional GC giving the board and the executive a senior legal voice on the recurring strategic decisions; and embedded senior legal capacity through Arbor Edge for teams that need additional capability without going through a hiring cycle. Each can stand alone. Most clients use more than one over time as the business grows into its own legal function.
Kate Bennett, co-founder of Arbor, leads our General Counsel Solutions practice. Kate spent eight and a half years as Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at two FTSE 250 financial services groups before founding Arbor in 2019, after a senior associate career in capital markets at Baker McKenzie split between Chicago and London. She has been delivering Virtual GC services to regulated firms for the seven years since. Pregeshni Maduramuthu leads our compliance team alongside the GC work where the engagement is regulated. Ed Rea, co-founder, leads the technology, tech infrastructure and telecoms strand where the seat needs sector specialism. Dan Adams, co-founder, leads the media and media-tech strand with twenty-five years across the legal, technology and media sectors.
Who needs General Cousel?
For CEOs, CFOs and founders who do not yet have a General Counsel
You are at the point where someone needs to own legal as a function, not just as a service line. The board is asking questions you do not have a single person to answer. The volume of work is growing faster than the budget that supports it. A full-time GC hire is two years away from being commercially justified, and the work cannot wait for that calendar.
A Virtual or Fractional GC engagement fills the seat without the long lead time and without committing the business to a six-figure salary line before the function has found its shape. You get a named senior lawyer at the table for the decisions that matter, with the rest of Arbor behind them on the technical work. The arrangement is built around the operating rhythm of your business: weekly office hours with the CEO and CFO where useful, board attendance where the matter calls for it, and a named partner who knows the business well enough to give you an answer the first time you ask.
For CFOs at regulated and scaling businesses
Legal spend has become a line item the board notices, and the question you are getting asked is whether the firm is buying senior judgement or partner hours. Most regulated mid-market businesses carry too much external legal cost without the strategic coverage that justifies it. You also carry a quiet personal exposure that the rest of the executive team rarely sees: the regulatory points that fall to you in the absence of a GC.
A Virtual GC engagement consolidates the senior legal relationship into one named lawyer at a predictable cost, with a defined scope, a defined fee envelope and a board-ready view of legal risk and spend. For firms in FCA authorisation, post-authorisation or under supervisory pressure, the engagement scales to the regulatory rhythm rather than the calendar. The aim is a legal cost line you can defend internally and a senior named contact you can put in front of your audit and risk committee.
For existing GCs and Heads of Legal needing additional senior capacity
You have the seat. The team is what is under pressure. An M&A spike, a regulatory programme, an international expansion, a transformation project, a maternity gap or a difficult investigation. Hiring senior people is expensive and slow. Using a panel firm gives you partner hours rather than embedded capability.
Arbor Edge gives you embedded senior legal capability for the period and the scope you need: experienced lawyers who integrate into your team and operate autonomously inside it, without you having to brief them from scratch every Monday. Arbor Law gives you senior specialist support on the work that needs a partner-level eye and that your team is not built to handle internally. The two can be used in combination on a single engagement, on the same fee envelope, with one named relationship lead on the Arbor side.
For international financial services institutions establishing or scaling a UK presence
Your group already has a GC. The London entity needs senior UK legal presence rather than legal leadership: someone who holds the UK side of the function, reports into group legal, and integrates with the group’s chain of command rather than operating around it. The work that matters in the first eighteen months is UK regulatory perimeter, FCA authorisation and the early supervisory relationship, SMCR allocation inside a UK-affiliated entity, the governance overlay on group structure, English-law commercial templates and the senior employment matters that come with hiring a UK leadership team. A permanent UK GC hire is rarely justifiable until the UK operation is at scale. A panel of UK firms gives you partner hours but not the single named senior contact who knows the business inside out.
A Virtual or Fractional GC engagement sits inside your group’s chain of command and acts as the UK arm of the function. Kate has lived this relationship from both sides: as a senior associate in Baker McKenzie’s London office advising international clients on UK entry, and as Group General Counsel of two FTSE 250 financial services groups operating across multiple jurisdictions. The engagement is built to scale with the UK business, including when the UK becomes the launchpad for European, Gulf or further international expansion, with Arbor’s network of senior counterpart firms extending the model where the work crosses a border.
What you get when you engage Arbor for General Counsel Solutions
A senior named lead from day one
Kate, Pregeshni, Ed or Dan leads the relationship personally, depending on sector and scope. The team behind them is senior too: lawyers who have done this work in private practice, in-house, or both. You will not be handed to a junior to run the day-to-day, then to a partner to sign off the board paper.
A bill you can defend internally
Ex-Magic Circle and BigLaw expertise at the rate a Magic Circle associate charges, structured as a monthly retainer scaled to the rhythm of your business rather than an open-ended hourly model. The retainer is sized at the start of the engagement, reviewed quarterly, and adjusted if the volume of work changes materially. You will know what the engagement costs before you sign it, and you will know if it is going to change before it does.
Advice calibrated to where your business actually is
A pre-Series B fintech needs a different GC engagement from an FTSE 250 group rebuilding its in-house function. The work that matters in year one of a scale-up is rarely the work that matters in year five. We size the engagement to the stage you are actually at, and we re-scope it when the business changes rather than asking you to renegotiate every time.
Sector context already on the page
We act for fintechs, regulated payment and e-money businesses, asset and wealth managers, corporate finance advisory boutiques, technology and tech-infrastructure businesses, media and media-tech businesses, and the international groups setting up regulated UK entities. We do not need a primer on what your business does before we can be useful.
A straight answer on what you actually need
Sometimes the engagement you are scoping is bigger than the business needs, and sometimes it is smaller. Sometimes a Virtual GC is the right answer, sometimes a Fractional GC with Embedded support is, and sometimes the right answer is to hire internally and use Arbor for senior specialist coverage on top. We will tell you which on the first call rather than wait for the meter to run. Where we are not the right firm for what you need, we will tell you that too.
A working pattern that fits the way your business runs
We sit alongside your founders, board, executive team, finance function and any existing in-house counsel rather than around them. The cadence of the engagement is set with you at the start: weekly office hours, monthly check-ins, board attendance where it matters, and an always-on senior contact for the questions that cannot wait for the calendar.
How it works
Virtual General Counsel
A flexible, integrated senior legal partnership for businesses that need ongoing GC-level support without building a full in-house team. The Virtual GC acts as the named senior legal contact for the business, holds weekly or fortnightly office hours with the executive team, attends board and ExCo where useful, owns the external legal relationships, and brings the rest of Arbor’s specialist bench in behind them where the work needs it. Suited to scaling and regulated businesses that have outgrown the panel-firm model but are not yet at the scale to justify a full-time GC.
Fractional General Counsel
Structured senior legal leadership on a recurring part-time basis: typically a named day or days per week, with board and ExCo attendance built into the cadence. Suited to businesses that need GC-level legal input on the recurring strategic decisions (governance, fundraising, M&A, regulatory and senior employment) but where the volume of operational legal work does not yet justify a Virtual GC engagement.
Embedded Legal Capability via Arbor Edge
Senior legal professionals integrated directly into your legal and commercial teams, delivered through Arbor Edge. Suited to businesses with an existing legal function that needs additional capacity for a defined period or scope (M&A programme, regulatory transformation, international expansion, maternity cover) rather than the GC seat itself. Edge lawyers operate autonomously inside the team and bring Arbor Law’s specialist bench behind them where the work calls for it.
Where we go deepest: regulated businesses and internationally active groups
Two client profiles sit at the centre of our General Counsel Solutions work and bring most of the recent engagements.
Regulated businesses are an Arbor specialism. The combination of senior GC-side perspective from Kate and dedicated FCA compliance leadership from Pregeshni means we can run the legal and compliance pieces of a regulated business under a single engagement, with one named relationship lead, one fee envelope and one point of contact for your SMF and audit and risk committee. The Virtual GC engagement scales to the regulatory rhythm of the firm, including the early supervisory relationship in the first eighteen months after authorisation, the SMCR and Consumer Duty operating cycles, and the FCA touchpoints that arrive whether or not anyone has planned for them.
Internationally active groups are the other concentration of our work, and the engagement model we run for them is purpose-built. The UK arm sits inside the group’s legal function with one named senior contact, reports into group legal on the cadence the group requires, and integrates with the wider regulatory, corporate and employment work the group is running elsewhere. When the UK becomes the launchpad for further international expansion, the same engagement extends into a wider UK hub, with Arbor coordinating senior counterpart firms in the relevant jurisdictions on a single fee envelope and a single relationship lead. This model is particularly suited to financial services groups headquartered in the US, Europe, the Gulf and Asia.
Our General Counsel Solutions services across leadership, capacity and operational support
Strategic legal leadership
Board-level legal input on commercial strategy, fundraising, M&A, restructuring, governance and the recurring strategic decisions a GC normally owns. The engagement is calibrated to the rhythm of your board and ExCo rather than ours.
Regulatory and governance
FCA authorisation, variation of permission, SMCR, Consumer Duty, board effectiveness, Section 166 preparation and the day-to-day mechanics of being regulated. Worked alongside our Financial Services Regulatory and Outsourced Compliance practices.
Corporate, M&A and fundraising support
Senior corporate cover on deals the in-house function does not have the bandwidth to lead, including fundraising rounds, M&A, joint ventures, restructuring and pre-IPO preparation. Worked alongside our Corporate and Fundraising and Investment practices.
Commercial contracts, procurement and supplier risk
Senior commercial-contract oversight, framework agreement work, technology and outsourcing contracts, supplier risk frameworks and the commercial mechanics that scale across markets.
Employment, mobility and executive matters
Senior employment work, executive contracts, equity and incentive arrangements, international mobility, senior-team exits and the difficult employment matters that need a GC’s hand rather than an HR director’s.
Legal function design and operations
Building, scaling and optimising a modern legal function: structure, sourcing, workflow, technology, contracting processes, knowledge management and the early design choices that determine whether the function can scale with the business.
International expansion and UK market entry
Senior UK-side legal leadership for international groups entering or operating in the UK, and for UK groups expanding internationally. Worked alongside our International Expansion practice and a network of senior counterpart firms.
Risk, governance and internal investigations
Preventative risk frameworks, board governance work, discrete internal investigations, regulatory breach handling and crisis response. Worked alongside our Risk and Internal Investigations practice.
Get in touch today
The sooner the right person sees what you are trying to build, the cleaner the engagement tends to be. Send us a short note about where your business is and what is on the senior legal agenda over the next twelve months. Kate will come back to you personally to talk it through, and where the engagement needs a specialist she will bring Pregeshni, Ed or Dan into the conversation. The first conversation is on us, and if we are not the right firm for what you need we will tell you, and where we can we will point you to someone who is.
- +44 (0)20 7355 0540
- info@arbor.law
- 20 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE
