Fractional General Counsel for SaaS Scale-ups

What a fractional General Counsel does

A fractional General Counsel (sometimes called an interim or part-time GC) is an experienced senior lawyer who acts as your legal function for an agreed part of the week or month. You get the judgment of someone who has run legal at scale, applied to the problems your company actually has, and you pay for the time and the outcomes you need rather than a permanent salary.

For a scale-up, that usually means owning the contract process, setting the rules Sales and Product can work within, handling the harder negotiations, and managing outside counsel so that your CEO or CFO does not have to.

When a SaaS company needs one

Most companies reach the same point. Founder-negotiated deals and startup-era templates stop working, but a full-time General Counsel is still a year or two away. Typical signs:

Enterprise customers are redlining your MSA, and every deal takes a different path through legal.
Data processing agreements and security schedules are slowing down sales.
Procurement teams ask for bespoke liability caps, insurance or audit terms.
Product and Engineering are introducing AI functionality and need clear rules on data and IP.
International resellers, partners or channel agreements are appearing.
The CEO or CFO is managing outside counsel and legal questions themselves.
You are heading towards a funding round, a sale or a carve-out and want the legal house in order first.

How we can work together

Engagements are scoped to the problem in front of you rather than sold as a fixed package.

Advisory retainer: a standing monthly allocation for contract review and fast-turnaround questions from Sales or Product, for teams that already have someone owning contracts.
Embedded fractional GC: closer involvement in leadership discussions, ownership of contract negotiation, maintenance of policies and playbooks, and triage across Sales, Product and Engineering.
Sprint engagement: a fixed-fee piece of work such as a major enterprise MSA, a data-licensing or reseller agreement, or a contract template and playbook your Sales team can use to close routine deals without waiting for legal.

Privacy and AI governance support, including GDPR gap assessments, data processing agreements and privacy-by-design review of new product or AI features, can be added to any of these. If you are heading towards a transaction, I can also support the legal workstream for M&A, carve-outs or divestitures. See the services overview for more detail.

Experience behind the advice

I have spent nearly 20 years in private practice and in-house. I was General Counsel at GfK, where I led a legal team of 25 and the legal workstream on the multi-€bn divestiture of GfK to Advent International and NielsenIQ. I was also VP Legal, Privacy & Cybersecurity at NielsenIQ and Director Compliance at adidas, and I have negotiated directly with Google, Microsoft, AWS and Meta. I have built a GDPR compliance framework, introduced a contract lifecycle management system, and led legal enablement for an AI-driven SaaS platform, covering product design, IP and data use, commercial terms and regulatory issues. More detail is on the experience page.

English law, based in Germany and the UK

I am a solicitor of England & Wales (and of Victoria, Australia), based across Nuremberg and London, and I advise on English law and cross-border commercial matters. I am not admitted as a German Rechtsanwalt. Where advice must be specifically on German law, I work alongside a German lawyer.

How an engagement starts

It starts with a short scoping call to see whether legal is really the bottleneck and whether I am the right fit. If it is, I send a written scope, engagement model and fee for you to agree before any work begins. Fees depend on the model and the scope, so they are set on that call rather than published in advance.