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A fractional general counsel is a senior lawyer who runs your legal function part time, owning contracts, fundraising, compliance and board support. Fellow gives you that person, plus the team that does the work behind them.
Deals are closing on terms a founder skimmed at midnight, and nobody owns the question of which terms are actually acceptable.
Questions about IP ownership, data handling and compliance now arrive with an audience, and the honest answer is that nobody is tracking it.
A full time general counsel is a senior six figure hire plus equity. Below a certain scale that person spends half the week underused.
Not just advice. The decisions, the systems, and the people who execute them.
What gets done, what gets deferred, and which risks are worth carrying at your stage.
Term sheet review, board approvals, diligence readiness, and a data room that does not stall a round.
Standard terms, fallback positions, and a redline policy so your team stops escalating every deal.
Customer and vendor negotiations handled directly, including enterprise procurement and security review.
Immigration, tax, IP and local counsel coordinated for you, with one point of contact who stays accountable.
Corporate formalities, data protection obligations, and the housekeeping investors check before they wire.
A solo fractional GC is one person's calendar. When they are in a board meeting, your deal waits. Fellow pairs a GC level lead with the team that drafts, files and negotiates behind them. If you need one specific deliverable rather than an owner, a startup lawyer engagement is the cheaper answer.
Fellow is more like a consigliere than just a law firm. I couldn't recommend a better legal partner for a startup. Their ability to foresee problems and find proactive solutions is unmatched.
Jan Ondrasek
ClaimPartner, New York
They own your legal function part time: setting priorities, deciding what risk is acceptable, running fundraising and contract work, managing outside specialists, and answering to the board. The distinction from a regular lawyer is ownership. A fractional GC decides what should happen, not only how to do the thing you asked for.
At Fellow it runs as a monthly subscription. Plans start at $1,690 per month for direct attorney access on Slack, $5,250 per month with two standard deliverables and a monthly strategy call included, and $10,900 per month for a dedicated attorney, five deliverables and bi weekly strategy calls. A full time general counsel is a senior six figure salary plus equity.
Fractional means someone embedded in your company part time who owns the legal function. Outsourced or outside general counsel usually means an external firm doing ongoing legal work without owning strategy. Fellow covers both, and we will tell you which one your stage actually calls for.
When legal volume genuinely fills a full week, when the work needs someone in internal meetings daily, or when regulatory exposure makes an employee the safer structure. That is usually somewhere around Series B or later, and it varies a lot by sector. We would rather tell you that you have outgrown us than keep billing you.
Fellow feels like an extension of our team, always available, always ready to help. Their support and subscription model remove the stress of billable hours.
Jiri Diblik, VOS.health, Prague
A short call is usually enough to tell whether you need an owner, a deliverable, or nothing yet.
Book an intro call