Solutions
General Counsel Solutions
Senior judgement, without the pyramid: a General Counsel who has held the seat, embedded in your leadership team, without the cost of building the function before you are ready. Virtual, fractional, or embedded through Arbor Edge, with the full bench of the firm behind every engagement.
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 research alone, and integrates into the rhythm of the business as it grows. Most scaling, regulated or internationally active businesses need that judgement long before they can justify a full in-house team.
Today the available choices leave a gap. A panel firm owns the work but not the strategy: it is brought in when specialist support is needed, but it has not sat in the boardroom making strategic, risk-based decisions, and may not carry that commercial judgement. An in-house hire is the right answer eventually, but expensive and premature before the volume justifies it, and a single hire has no specialist depth behind them. A consultancy can run the operational side, but cannot do the substantive legal and regulatory work. And a standalone virtual or fractional GC gives you one capable person, but without a firm’s specialist depth behind them. Most businesses are forced to choose between these. We combine them all.
Arbor closes that gap. You get a named senior lead who understands the business, sits close to the decision-makers, and owns the legal, regulatory and governance agenda, with the full bench of the firm behind them whenever specialist support is needed. We provide it as a Virtual GC, a Fractional GC, or embedded senior capacity through Arbor Edge. Each can stand alone, and most clients use more than one as the business grows into its own legal function. The result is premium legal leadership made practical: senior enough for the board, commercial enough for the CFO, close enough for the executive team, and scalable enough to grow with the business.
Built by people who have held the seat
This is the heart of our model, and it is true of all of us, not just the lawyer who leads your engagement. We have been General Counsel, for years, alongside senior careers at leading City and international firms.
We have carried regulatory risk in our own names, sat on the executive, answered to the board and the regulator, and run legal and compliance through fundraises, a changing regulatory landscape and international expansion. When your GC reads a board paper, a regulator’s letter or a term sheet, they have been the person who had to act on it. That is the difference between advising on a decision and having owned it.
Excellence, made accessible
The largest businesses have always been able to buy senior legal leadership and scale strategically. We do not see why ambitious, fast-growing companies should go without it. Our lawyers are recognised in Chambers and Partners and the Legal 500, and we have built the model so that businesses of that ambition can have a General Counsel of the same calibre, bespoke to them, on terms a CFO can defend internally.
Used well, that is a strategic advantage: it sharpens fundraising, with investor-ready governance and a clean diligence story; it de-risks regulatory compliance, with the whole regulated continuum owned by one lead; and it gives you operational agility, with senior judgement available at the speed the business actually moves.
Who needs General Cousel?
For businesses that have reached the point where legal needs a senior owner
You may not need a full-time General Counsel yet, but the business has reached the point where legal, regulatory and governance issues need to be owned, not just sent out to lawyers when they arise. The board is asking sharper questions. Investors expect a cleaner governance story. The business is growing across products, markets or jurisdictions, and legal has become part of how it makes decisions, manages risk and scales.
A Virtual or Fractional GC engagement gives you that ownership before a permanent hire makes commercial sense. You get a named senior lawyer who understands the business, sits close to the decision-makers, and brings in the rest of Arbor where specialist support is needed.
For international businesses entering or expanding in the UK
You may already have a group GC, but the UK business needs senior legal presence on the ground: someone who can hold the UK legal and governance picture, integrate with group legal, and manage the local legal, regulatory and operational issues that come with market entry.
That may include corporate structuring, regulatory analysis, FCA authorisation, governance implementation, UK commercial templates, employment arrangements, board support and ongoing legal oversight. The engagement is built to sit inside the group’s existing chain of command, rather than operating around it.
For businesses using the UK as a platform for wider expansion
For some clients, the UK is not the end point. It is the platform for European, Gulf or wider international growth. In those cases, the legal work is not only about establishment; it is about building a structure that can scale: governance that travels, regulatory analysis that fits the business model, and local counsel input coordinated through one senior legal lead. We help keep that expansion coherent, so the business is not managing a series of disconnected local legal workstreams without a clear view of risk.
For businesses using the UK as a platform for wider expansion
For some clients, the UK is not the end point. It is the platform for European, Gulf or wider international growth. In those cases, the legal work is not only about establishment; it is about building a structure that can scale: governance that travels, regulatory analysis that fits the business model, and local counsel input coordinated through one senior legal lead. We help keep that expansion coherent, so the business is not managing a series of disconnected local legal workstreams without a clear view of risk.
For existing GCs and Heads of Legal needing additional senior capacity
You may already have the seat. The issue is capacity, seniority or specialist coverage. An M&A spike, fundraising round, regulatory programme, international expansion, investigation, transformation project or temporary leadership gap can stretch even a strong legal team. Through Arbor Edge we provide embedded senior legal capacity for the period and scope needed, with experienced lawyers who integrate into the team and operate autonomously. Where specialist advice is needed, the wider Arbor bench sits behind the engagement, with one named relationship lead keeping the work joined up.
What you get when you engage Arbor for General Counsel Solutions
A senior named lead, with a whole law firm behind them
Your engagement is led personally by a senior lawyer, chosen for the sector, scope and need. That lawyer has both practised at the top of leading City and international firms and held senior roles in-house, as General Counsel or Head of Legal. You are not handed to a junior for the day-to-day and brought back to a partner only for sign-off.
This is where Arbor is different from a standalone fractional GC. You are not relying on one person to know everything, because no one does. A real General Counsel knows what they do not know and brings in the right specialist; a sole operator has to pretend otherwise. We do not pretend, and that is exactly where it becomes strategic. The full bench of the firm is always there when you need it, across corporate, regulatory, employment, disputes and data, and our team knows when bringing it in is in your best interest and will say so. When it is not needed, you are not paying for a standing team, and the package is built around you: the cadence, the scope and the cost are set to your business, not to a template.
Pricing that works around your business
You get senior, City-trained and in-house expertise, without the leverage and overhead that inflate a traditional firm’s bill. We agree how we charge before we start: a retainer scaled to the rhythm of your business, a fixed or capped fee, or an hourly rate where that fits the work. The arrangement is sized at the outset, reviewed as the work evolves, and changed only where the scope or volume materially changes, so you always know what it costs before you sign and before anything moves.
Advice calibrated to the stage you are actually at
A business filing for FCA authorisation does not need the same engagement as one rapidly scaling across products and markets. The work that is essential in year one is rarely the work that is the focus in year five. We size the engagement to where the business is now and re-scope it as the business changes, rather than forcing you into a template.
Sector context from day one
We advise across financial services and beyond: MiFID investment firms, corporate finance boutiques, asset managers, regulated payment and e-money businesses, fintech, technology and tech-infrastructure businesses, media and media-tech businesses, and international groups establishing regulated UK operations. We do not need a primer on your market before we can be useful.
A straight answer on what you actually need
Sometimes a Virtual GC is the right answer, sometimes a Fractional GC with embedded support is, and sometimes the better answer is to hire internally and use Arbor for senior specialist coverage around that hire. We will tell you which model makes sense on the first call rather than wait for the meter to run, including where Arbor is not the right fit.
A working pattern that fits how 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 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
There are three ways to engage us, but one idea behind all of them: you are buying a General Counsel function, not legal hours.
Most businesses are forced to choose between leadership, availability and embedded capacity; we provide all three and move you between them as the business changes. The principle is consistent throughout: you have a named senior lead who understands the business, provides strategic legal judgement, and is the gateway to the wider Arbor team when specialist support is required.
Virtual General Counsel: the function
A Virtual General Counsel is the senior legal owner of the function. The focus is responsibility and leadership, not time: a named senior lawyer who owns the legal, regulatory and governance agenda, acts as the primary legal adviser to founders, executives and the board, coordinates specialist advisers and external counsel, oversees legal risk across the business, and provides continuity and institutional knowledge. Some weeks that is a few hours, others several days, depending on what is happening. What you buy is a General Counsel function, not days. It suits scaling companies, international businesses entering the UK, regulated firms and organisations that have outgrown the panel-firm model but are not yet ready to build a full in-house function.
Fractional General Counsel: a delivery model
A Fractional General Counsel is the same engagement, delivered through a dedicated allocation of time each month. The focus shifts from ownership to capacity and availability: a senior lawyer working a defined number of days, participating in board and executive processes and providing ongoing senior legal support within that allocation. You still get a senior legal owner, not a junior resource. It suits businesses that need regular access to senior legal judgement but do not yet have the volume of work to justify a permanent General Counsel.
Embedded legal capability through Arbor Edge
Embedded capability through Arbor Edge is closer to a placement, but a senior one: an experienced lawyer who has held these roles, integrated directly into your legal, commercial or operational team for a defined project, programme or period of increased demand, whether an acquisition, a regulatory transformation, an international expansion, a fundraise or a temporary leadership gap. Edge lawyers operate as part of the team rather than as external advisers, and where specialist expertise is required, Arbor’s wider bench can be brought in seamlessly.
Built to scale with you
The legal needs of a business change as it grows. The support required before a fundraising round is different from the support required after one, and entering a new market differs from managing a regulated business, integrating an acquisition or preparing for exit. Many clients begin with a Virtual or Fractional GC and later add specialist regulatory, corporate, employment or disputes support as the business grows; others supplement an existing team with embedded capability through Arbor Edge; some use all three at different stages. Throughout, the relationship stays anchored by a named senior lawyer who understands the business and can draw on the wider Arbor team when needed. The result is a legal partnership that scales with the business: from market entry to expansion, from authorisation to supervision, from fundraising to exit.
Where we go deepest: regulated businesses and international growth
Much of our work sits at the intersection of regulation, governance, growth and international expansion.
For regulated businesses, the value is not legal advice or compliance support in isolation. It is one senior relationship across everything: authorisation, governance, compliance, supervisory engagement, board reporting, the negotiation of commercial agreements and growth, rather than separate, disconnected workstreams. Combining senior General Counsel experience with dedicated financial services regulatory capability, we support firms throughout the regulated continuum, from structuring and FCA authorisation, through governance, compliance and supervisory engagement, to fundraising, expansion and strategic transactions.
Arbor is one of the few law firms able to support SMF16 and SMF17 functions through outsourced managed compliance, ongoing compliance and financial crime programmes for regulated clients. That means the whole regulated continuum can sit within a single senior relationship. The engagement scales to the regulatory lifecycle, whether that is the first eighteen months after authorisation, the SMCR and Consumer Duty cycles, responding to regulatory change, engaging with the FCA, or supporting the board through periods of growth and scrutiny.
International businesses and inward investors are the other major focus of our practice. General Counsel Solutions connects directly with our inward investment work: we establish the UK business, build the legal and governance functions, and hold the UK legal picture as one senior lead, across market entry, corporate structuring, regulatory analysis, governance implementation and ongoing General Counsel support. For many, the UK is the platform for wider European, Gulf or international growth, and we build a legal and governance framework that scales, coordinating specialist advisers and local counsel while maintaining one relationship lead and a joined-up view of risk. See International Expansion and Market Entry for the full lifecycle.
This is not limited to financial services. We have run inward investment work across sectors, including technology and tech-infrastructure, telecoms, and media and media-tech, with a sector lead who has done the work in each, so the team you get already understands the market you are entering.
Our General Counsel Solutions services across leadership, capacity and operational support
No two engagements look exactly the same, but the work typically sits across a number of recurring areas:
Typical areas of support
- Board and governance support
- Fundraising and investment rounds
- FCA authorisations and regulatory change programmes
- Regulatory engagement and supervisory matters
- Corporate structuring and reorganisations
- Mergers, acquisitions and strategic transactions
- Commercial contracts and key customer relationships
- Senior employment and executive matters
- International expansion and market entry
- Risk management and business-critical decisions
- Investor, shareholder and stakeholder management
- Building and scaling in-house legal functions
For some clients we act as the senior legal owner across all of these; for others we provide strategic oversight while coordinating specialist support from Arbor’s wider bench. The objective is the same: legal, regulatory and governance issues managed as part of business strategy, not as a series of disconnected workstreams.
Your team
We are all senior, and we have all held these roles. We match you with the right senior lead for your business, its sector and the stage it is at, and the full bench of the firm sits behind them. General Counsel Solutions is led by Kate Bennett, founding partner of Arbor Law. Kate spent seven years as UK General Counsel and Group Company Secretary at two FTSE-listed financial services groups, including at FTSE 100 level, before founding Arbor in 2019, after nearly a decade in capital markets at Baker McKenzie. She has delivered Virtual GC services to a range of financial services, investment and technology clients ever since.
Related areas we can help in
FCA Authorisation
For first-time FCA authorisation and variations of permission, see FCA Authorisation.
Outsourced Compliance Solutions
For the wider regulatory picture, see Financial Services Regulatory, and for ongoing managed compliance, see Outsourced Compliance Solutions.
Fundraising and Investment
For fundraising and investment rounds, see Fundraising and Investment.
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 the business is and what is on the senior legal agenda over the next twelve months, and one of us will come back to you personally, usually within one working day. 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, point you to someone who is.
- +44 (0)20 7355 0540
- info@arbor.law
- 20 North Audley Street, London W1K 6WE
