Most of this work does not justify a full-time hire, and outside counsel bills it hourly without ever learning your business. Fractional counsel sits in between: a lawyer who knows your systems, your vendors, and your risk posture, engaged in whichever shape the work requires.
Ongoing general counsel
A set number of hours each month covering the ordinary legal flow of the company — commercial contracts, board minutes and resolutions, equity and option administration, employment escalations, vendor and customer disputes, policy questions, and support on transactions as they arise.
The relationship. Same counsel, continuous context, a predictable monthly number.
A defined program
One piece of work with a delivered artifact, at a fixed price agreed before it starts. A privacy program, an incident response plan, a single market entry. Run inside a monthly engagement or entirely on its own.
The project. For closing a specific gap rather than covering the whole function.
Interim coverage
A departure, a leave, or the stretch before you hire. The full function for a bounded term, including the parts nobody writes down: the standing meetings, the escalations, and the questions that arrive without warning.
The seat. For when it is empty and cannot stay that way.
The six programs below are where this practice is unusually deep. A monthly engagement covers everything else a company needs from a lawyer, so you are not deciding whether a question is important enough to call about. Monthly engagements carry a stated hour allocation, with anything beyond it scoped separately before the work begins; litigation is managed rather than conducted in-house, with trial counsel retained and supervised where a matter requires it.