Guide · For companies
Three different products. One keeps the lights on. One puts a GC in the room two days a week. One fills the office. Boards that mix the clocks decide the wrong search has failed.
If the seat is empty on Monday, the answer is not an 11-week search. If the board wants an officer, a day-rate is not a cheaper version of the same thing.
Choose the model by what fails if you pick the other one. Interim cover starts in 7 days (median of 60+ interim and fractional engagements, counted apart from 230+ permanent in-house placements). A retained permanent GC search reaches a shortlist in 24 days and an accepted offer in 11 weeks, of 38 GC and CLO files since 2017. Senior counsel closes in 8 weeks, of 96. Fractional GC is neither: two to three days a week, a day-rate, often the first legal hire at Series B to C.
ACC's 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey found 63 percent of 1,049 respondents expecting headcount to stay flat and 48 percent increasing their use of outside counsel. That is a budget shape, not a staffing answer. CLOC's 2025 State of the Industry Report put median legal-department headcount at 77 full-time equivalents. Most companies reading this page are not that department. They are deciding whether the next dollar buys a person in the chair this month or an officer next quarter. The fractional general counsel service and the building in-house legal teams are the two pages to keep open.
| Model | Time to start | Cost shape | Failure mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interim GC / CCO / counsel | 7 days median | Day-rate; stops when the work ends | Used as a cheap permanent officer |
| Fractional GC (2-3 days/wk) | 7 days median | Day-rate; US $2,800-$4,500 | Used where a regulator wants a named incumbent |
| Permanent GC / CLO | Shortlist 24 days; offer 11 weeks | Retained fee, 28-33% of first-year cash, 12-month replacement | Rushed because the seat is already empty |
| Permanent senior counsel | Shortlist 18 days; offer 8 weeks | Retained or exclusive; 6-month replacement | Hired to do the GC's job without the title |
Clocks: 60+ interim/fractional; 38 GC/CLO; 96 senior counsel. Fee percentages are the retained engagement model, not a bid.
Source: Sartori & Partners, 2017-2026; rates 2022-2026.
Ask what breaks in the next six weeks if no lawyer is in the chair. Then ask what breaks in the next two years if the person in the chair is still on a day-rate.
Continuity is a six-week question. A financing that needs a signature, a parental leave, a CCO who has resigned before the examination, a carve-out that still has to close: those are continuity failures. They are not a reason to collapse a retained search into a weekend of CVs. They are a reason to put an interim on the work on a day-rate while the permanent search runs on its own clock. Our San Francisco interim desk and the New York interim desk exist because that dual-track is common, not exotic.
The two-year question is different. A company that still has a fractional GC at $250 million of revenue, dual-regulated, with a board that wants minutes signed, is not being frugal. It is leaving an officer-shaped hole. The first general counsel guide is the readiness test for companies that have never had the seat. This page is the model test for companies that already know they need a lawyer and are arguing about the contract.
A named person, on the work, in days. Not a temp desk. Not a panel partner who will bill you for learning the company.
Interim is a full-time, fixed-term insertion: parental leave, a resignation with no deputy, a deal that cannot wait for notice periods. The lawyer is in the company's systems, in the meetings, on the signature block the panel cannot occupy. US interim GC rates run $1,800 to $3,200 a day; interim CCO $2,200 to $3,800; commercial counsel secondment $1,200 to $2,200. UK interim GC is £1,400 to £2,400. The company stops paying when the cover ends. That is the whole commercial idea.
We have delivered 60+ of these engagements. Median start is 7 days from the first call. A Series C fintech in San Francisco needed cover for parental leave plus a financing; the interim GC was live on the work on day 6. That file is not inside the 230+ permanent placements. It is the other ledger. The interim legal talent page is the product; this section is the decision to buy it.
Timeline: Start day 6 · of 60+ interim and fractional files
Two or three days a week. A brain in the room. The panel still does the volume. This is how many first legal hires should start.
Fractional GC is the model a Series B to C company should consider before it copies a listed-company job description. Seed to Series A teams in our files are often 0 to 1 lawyers, and that one is frequently fractional. Series B to C / under $50 million of revenue: 1 lawyer. The guide to building in-house legal teams is the sequencing; the fractional general counsel line is the hire. A CHRO at a family-owned manufacturing group told us the first legal hire still does commercial and privacy. That is a fractional-shaped job whether the contract says employee or not.
US fractional GC at two to three days a week bills $2,800 to $4,500 a day; first-GC fractional below $100 million of revenue is $2,200 to $3,400; UK is £1,800 to £3,200 and £1,500 to £2,400. Privacy and AI-governance intercept work sits at $1,600 to $2,800 a day when the company needs a specialist surge rather than a second employee. The conversion rule is the same as interim: days billed are credited against a later retained fee when the company is ready for a first general counsel search.
An officer. A reporting line. A replacement window. This is the retained search, and it does not start on day seven.
Permanent is the model when the company needs a person the board can introduce as the general counsel, the chief compliance officer, or the Head of Legal. Reporting line, secretary book, audit-committee access: those are officer facts. ACC 2026 has 84 percent of chief legal officers on a CEO line. You do not buy that with a day-rate and hope the title catches up. The method is the GC search guide: Mandate Blueprint in week 1, map not post, shortlist at 24 days, accepted offer at 11 weeks, 12-month replacement, 24-month off-limits on the legal department.
Do not hire a "senior counsel who will grow into GC" as a way to avoid the officer conversation. That is how a company gets a lawyer who cannot sit with the board and a board that still has no GC. If the honest first step is counsel, hire counsel on the 8-week clock, of 96 files, and write the GC search as a later mandate. The for companies desk will say which of the two letters to sign first.
The two clocks can run in parallel. They must not be averaged into one disappointed committee.
A day-rate looks expensive by the week and cheap by the year. A retained fee looks large in month one and is the cost of a mapped field.
Do the arithmetic on the problem, not on the daily number. An interim GC at $2,500 a day for twelve weeks is $150,000 of cover, and then it stops. A retained GC fee at 30 percent of $320,000 first-year cash is $96,000, paid in three instalments, with a 12-month replacement window — the worked example on the fees guide and the fee guide. Those two numbers do not compete. One buys continuity. The other buys an officer. A company that tries to buy the officer with the day-rate will still be interviewing in month four, now with a tired interim and a board that thinks search "does not work."
M&A surge counsel at $1,400 to $2,400 a day and legal-ops contractors at $900 to $1,600 a day are specialist inserts, not GC substitutes. Use them on the workstream. Do not use them as a way to avoid the seat.
That figure is a median on 60+ files. It is not a service-level slogan, and it is not available on a GC succession that still has an incumbent in the chair.
Seven days is what happens when the company already knows the work, the conflicts are clean, and the lawyer is available. It is the parental-leave file, the sudden resignation, the financing that moved. It is not what happens when the board has not agreed the scorecard, when two directors still want "someone who made partner," or when the company cannot say who the interim will report to. Those files take the time the Blueprint would have taken on a permanent search, because the missing document is the same document.
The methodology still applies: conflicts before outreach, no CV without consent, NDA on request. Speed is not a reason to skip the gates. A 7-day start that creates a conflict with a live panel matter is not a start. It is a problem with a timesheet.
We thought we needed a full-time GC. They said fractional for two quarters, then a permanent search. Both were right. The fractional counsel started in a week.
Interim to permanent is a designed join, not a hope that the person in the chair applies.
Write the join on day one of the interim. The cover lawyer may be a candidate for the permanent seat, or may be expressly not. Both are legitimate. What is not legitimate is leaving it unsaid, then discovering in week eight that the interim expected the job and the board wanted a search. Days billed are credited either way. The permanent process still maps the field, still produces dossiers, still puts finalists in front of directors. An internal-only appointment is a decision. It is not a search.
When the incumbent is still in post and the successor has signed, the handover is notice, live matters, and the panel. That is the notice and 90-day chapter of the GC method. Do not use an overlapping interim as a way to avoid a conversation with the sitting officer. Succession is a confidentiality problem first.
The empty chair does not pause examinations, financings, or the four-business-day incident clock. It only pauses the company's ability to answer them.
An empty GC seat is not a saving. It is outside-counsel spend without a buyer, a board that has no legal officer in the room, and a regulator that still has a named individual on last year's organisational chart. ACC 2026 recorded 48 percent of chief legal officers increasing outside-counsel use while 63 percent expected headcount to stay flat. That is the pattern of a function under volume with no new chairs. It is not an argument for leaving the top chair empty while a committee debates pedigree.
If the seat is already empty, buy cover this week and brief the retained search the same week. Two letters. Two clocks. The corporate desk will write both. If the seat is occupied and the board wants a successor, do not create emptiness in order to feel urgency. Run the confidential process. The incumbent does not need to learn from a posting that the search has started.
Yes: days already billed are credited against the later retained fee. The conversion is a new letter, not a silent change of status. The company has seen the lawyer on the work; the market has not been told the seat is open. That is the point of running cover first. The interim legal talent line and the permanent in-house search are two products. They can follow each other. They should not be one confused mandate.
The company, or a contractor arrangement the company already uses. We do not employ the lawyer. We find the person, check conflicts, and put them on the work. Payroll, benefits, visa and insurance stay with the company or its existing contractor vehicle. A search firm that becomes the employer of record is in a different business. We are not.
Conflicts are checked before outreach, the same gate as a permanent search. An interim GC cannot sit on both sides of a live matter, cannot bring a panel they intend to keep billing, and cannot take a second company in the same competitive set without the first company knowing. The 24-month off-limits on the client's legal department still applies after the engagement.
Because the clock is days, not years, and the company should stop paying when the work ends. A US interim GC bills $1,800 to $3,200 a day; a UK interim GC bills £1,400 to £2,400. Fractional GC at two to three days a week is $2,800 to $4,500 (US) or £1,800 to £3,200. Those bands, and when each model fits, are the fractional general counsel.
Median start is 7 days from the first call, of 60 or more interim and fractional files. That clock is not the permanent GC clock. Permanent GC is 24 days to shortlist and 11 weeks to accepted offer, of 38 files. Mixing the two clocks is how a board decides the permanent search 'failed' in week two.
When the work is daily, the board wants an officer, or a regulator expects a named incumbent. Fractional covers a company that still has a panel doing the volume and needs a brain in the room two or three days a week. It is the right first legal hire for many sub-$100 million companies. It is the wrong answer for a listed issuer that needs a signatory on the proxy and a voice in the audit committee every month.
The 7-day and 11-week clocks are Sartori files. Headcount pressure is ACC. Department scale is CLOC. Rates are the 2022 to 2026 engagement ledger.
Interim and fractional files (60+) are a separate ledger from the 230+ permanent in-house placements. Do not add them. ACC 2026 is 1,049 respondents. Day-rates are US and UK bands from engagements delivered 2022 to 2026.
Founders and boards deciding whether the first legal hire is full-time, fractional, or still a panel.
Read the first-hire guideWhat a department of four does that a department of one cannot, and where the second and third hires go.
Read the team guideThe retained method when the answer is a permanent officer: Blueprint, mapping, shortlist at 24 days, offer at 11 weeks.
Read the GC search methodCity desks that run cover: interim legal talent in San Francisco, New York, Houston. Permanent in-house line: in-house counsel recruiting.
For companies that cannot wait for notice periods
Interim and fractional start in 7 days, of 60+ files. A retained GC search is a different letter: shortlist in 24 days, median offer at 11 weeks.
