Virtual General Counsel

Outsourced Legal Services

Flexible, Expert Legal Support – Tailored to Your Business Needs

In today’s fast-moving business environment, legal issues can arise at any time, but not every company is ready to invest in a full-time in-house legal team. Ignition Law’s Virtual General Counsel, a type of legal outsourcing service, gives you access to sensibly priced, expert legal support across all departments, without the overheads.

Whether you need occasional guidance, interim cover or regular, ongoing advice, our fractional legal counsel service offers cost-effective, scalable support that flexes with your business. It’s a proactive, strategic partnership, not just reactive advice.

What is legal outsourcing?

Our VGC service, or legal outsourcing service, gives you direct access to a senior legal advisor who acts as an extension of your leadership team. From commercial contracts to employment matters, compliance, disputes, and more, we provide flexible, high-quality legal expertise across your business.

You will benefit from:

  • A dedicated lead lawyer who understands your business
  • Regular check-ins with your lead partner to stay aligned
  • Support with both day-to-day queries and strategic projects
  • Predictable monthly pricing and discounted subscription hours
  • Custom packages based on your specific needs

Why Choose a Fractional Legal Counsel Service?

1 . Cost-effective legal support

One of the primary advantages of our legal outsourcing service is cost savings. Instead of hiring a full-time in-house lawyer, you can access our expert legal advice with a dedicated team as and when needed, ensuring you only pay for the services you use.

 This is especially beneficial for growing businesses that need legal expertise and someone who knows and understands their business, but may not yet require a full-time legal team.  When you outsource your legal needs, you will free up internal resources and improve operational efficiency by letting our expert team handle your legal complexities.

2. Scalable support to meet your needs

Our VGC service is fully customisable, meaning we can scale our support based on your changing needs. Whether it’s a one-off project, monthly retainer, or ongoing advice, you can choose the level of service that best fits your business.

Future-proof your business. Investing in proactive legal support means you’re not just addressing immediate issues but also building a resilient foundation for future growth. Our strategic advice helps you stay ahead of regulatory changes and manage risk effectively.

3. Expertise without the overheads

You benefit from the expertise of seasoned legal professionals without the overhead costs associated with hiring in-house. Our legal general counsel is particularly well-suited for small to medium-sized businesses that need the knowledge and experience of a senior legal advisor but don’t have the budget for a full-time legal team.

4. Enhanced flexibility and availability

With our legal outsourcing service, you have access to a legal professional who understands your business and is available when you need them. This allows for faster decision-making, reduced risk, and the ability to stay ahead of potential legal issues before they escalate.

5. Comprehensive legal coverage

Our team covers a wide range of legal areas, including contract drafting and review, property law, employment law, intellectual property protection, regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, dispute resolution, and more.

Whatever legal challenges you face, our legal outsourcing service can provide the tailored advice you need. Our extensive network of specialist lawyers is here to ensure your business receives comprehensive legal support.

Benefits of choosing Ignition Law as your legal general counsel

  • Tailored legal solutions – Our legal advice is bespoke and designed to meet the specific needs of your business.
  • Proactive risk management – We work closely with you to identify potential legal risks before they become costly issues, ensuring your business remains compliant and protected.
  • Seamless integration – Our legal outsourcing integrates seamlessly into your business, working as part of your team to provide real-time legal advice.
  • Discreet and confidential – We take confidentiality seriously. You can trust us to handle your sensitive legal matters with the utmost discretion.

Who can benefit from our legal outsourcing service?

Our Virtual General Counsel/legal outsourcing service is ideal for a range of businesses and senior business leaders, including:

  • Start-ups and SMEs seeking flexible, cost-effective legal solutions without committing to full-time legal hires.
  • Growing businesses that need regular legal support but are not ready for a full in-house legal team.
  • Owners of fast-scaling businesses: Get expert legal guidance you need to navigate growth challenges and regulatory complexities without the resource burden of an in-house team.
  • Corporate legal departments looking to outsource specific legal functions or require additional support during busy periods.
  • Entrepreneurs who need expert legal advice to navigate complex transactions, contract negotiations, or regulatory challenges.
  • CFOs and Financial Directors: Streamline legal spend and optimise budgeting with fixed monthly costs and predictable legal fees.
  • Busy General Counsels and in-house legal teams: Supplement your internal talent with expert external support, ensuring continuous, senior coverage.

How our legal outsourcing service works

  1. Initial Consultation – We begin with an in-depth consultation to understand your business, your legal needs, and any ongoing or anticipated challenges.
  2. Customised Service Plan – Based on your requirements, we develop a tailored plan, offering a flexible retainer or hourly service depending on what works best for you.
  3. Ongoing Support – Your Virtual General Counsel will be available on-demand to provide legal advice, handle projects, or step in whenever you need assistance.
  4. Review and Adjust – As your business evolves, so too does our support. We regularly review our service to ensure it remains aligned with your legal and business goals.

Ready to Start?

Get flexible, high-quality legal support without the full-time commitment.


If you’d like to know more, or find out how our legal outsourcing service can support your business as it grows, contact Ignition Law, and we can provide you with a complimentary vGC brochure.

Please find a copy of our vGC flyer here.

Contact Us

Meet the team

  • Helen Gerrard

  • Hannah Jones

  • Tim Barnett-Richards

Get in Touch Today

If your business needs flexible, expert legal support without the burden of a full-time hire, our Virtual General Counsel service is the ideal solution. Contact us at Ignition Law today to learn how we can help safeguard your business and provide the legal expertise you need, exactly when you need it.

Contact Us At

0203 432 4020
info@ignition.law

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What People Say

Working with Ignition Law feels like having a trusted team member for all things legal. We won’t be able to move as fast as we do without Ignition. It’s the truth.
Ivan Beckley, FounderSuvera
As an early stage company, the understanding of our needs and the support provided by Ignition has been invaluable
Paul Rinne, CEOGripable
Ignition Law has been the perfect partner for our business from start-up through to growth into an SME. They have provided support with shareholding, employment and client commercial contracts as and when required. Highly recommend for Fintech start-ups.
Murray Abel, Managing DirectorControl Now
We found the team at Ignition incredibly commercial, business friendly and responsive. Having worked with Ignition for both our pre-seed and seed rounds we were impressed by how they scaled up to meet the challenge, and were able to advise us across a range of areas.
Lucas London,CEO & co-founderLick
A truly exceptional non traditional law firm which has the best of all worlds: top quality leadership and management; superb practitioners; an attitude that anything can be achieved; encouraging development of its people; strong client relationships; and world class response and focus. In addition, the work is always of the highest quality. I cannot recommend Ignition enough.
Rupert Tate, CEOBear Grylls Ventures
Friendly, helpful, understanding innovation.
Rag Satguru, DirectorAssemble Talent
The Ignition Law team is more passionate and dedicated than any firm we have ever worked with. During our funding round, Jake quickly got to grips with our needs from a legal perspective, but also clearly understood the broader commercial challenges we faced as a start-up. He’s incredibly well organised, always responsive, incredibly focused and above all, a real pleasure to work with! As a result, he has now become a core part of our team.
Max Lehnus, Founder & CEOWorldLabs
Ignition Law is incredibly people-orientated and all of the team members I have met are wonderful.
Libby Wood, Lead Programme ManagerSaiid Business School
Dr Logic recently entered a period of rapid growth and expansion resulting in us needing to develop a new Group Structure. As such, I was looking for a legal practice who could understand the business and walk me through the legal process as well as providing sound commercial advice. I was introduced to Ignition Law by one of Dr Logic's clients and I was impressed with their joined up thinking and quick response, they always came back really quickly whenever I had a question. The legal documentation that we've ended up with is perfect and just what we wanted - and they were very fairly priced.
Roman Marszalek, MDDr Logic
I engaged Ignition Law to help prepare a cookie policy, privacy policy and terms of use for my website. Julia Ellis was very responsive and gave very practical advice. I very much liked that the policies and terms weren’t too ‘legalese’, but seemed comprehensive.
Iain Russell, Founder and DirectorRussell IP Ltd
We’ve worked with Ignition Law with our first startup and they were quick, affordable and professional. Then when Covid-19 lockdown started earlier in the year we decided to build a community support app; vHelp. Ignition Law were incredible in helping us get the legal side sorted with fantastic turn around time.
Randa Bennett, CEO & FounderVeeloop
Ignition advised on the purchase of St Peter’s Brewery and we were extremely happy with the way they handled it. It was the first time we had bought an operating company but they guided us through the process in a way that really inspired confidence. Phil and Jon were approachable, super responsive, imaginative and highly professional. They thought of everything and we are extremely grateful for their advice. We cannot recommend Ignition highly enough.
Derek Jones, CEOSt Peter's Brewery
Phil and Lizzy have been wonderful on our seed round fundraising, really understanding our needs as an early stage start-up. They handled the whole process extremely professionally and promptly with a very kind soul.
Dr. Howard WuCEO
Ignition law have been fantastic. From our very first enquiry they went above and beyond to help and advise us, even before we'd signed up! Always quick to respond and not over complicating things. They were very helpful in and finding practical solutions with a tricky lease. Thanks to their amazing support we are now busy building our new bigger Pilates, Yoga and Ballet Barre fitness studio in Highbury!
Gabrielle BoydCo Founder
From the beginning, it felt like we were talking to a keep it real company who were focused on getting us over the line in a way that would be beneficial to us now and in the future. Phil and the team took time to break complex terms down to us, manage all the key stakeholders with us and were willing to iron out any issues along the way in an open and transparent way. A steep learning curve for us, made easier by the Ignition team. Thanks a lot for the hard work!
Tendai MoyoCEO
We had some property work that was beautifully handled by Helen Lucas and her team. The value of their effortless expertise was something we will never forget. If you're after honest, straight to the point expert legal advice then these guys are your first call. Highly recommend and will be back for any future work.
Farhana HaqueCo-Owner
I wish to thank Ignition Law for an outstanding service at excellent value for money. Helen Gerrard and Fiona Morris's advice was well-considered and highly responsive.
Phillip HyettFinance Director
Ignition advised Vox Financial Partners in their successful acquisition by Treliant, a US buyer. Vox was a global firm with multiple entities in three different jurisdictions, making it a complex deal to navigate. Ignition worked very well with our US legal team, and were responsive, diligent, and thorough in all their work; I also felt they “had our back” and were always looking out for our best interests. Where they most impressed was with their commercial-minded thinking: they displayed a great ability to clarify legal concepts for the non-lawyer and then to suggest practical approaches to break through barriers. And they’re good people! We truly enjoyed working with Phil, Lauren, John, and Elizabeth.
Colin ReidChief Strategy Officer
What a pleasure for the NHST to be working with Ignition Law. Their expertise and incredible attention to detail has been so important to us. So too has been their friendliness and guidance throughout. Very highly recommended.
Paul Coleman
My case was kindly picked up by ignition Law as a pro-bono which was very kind of them. I needed so much help in negotiating a contract that was important to me but didn't quite understand. I was given their professional advice on the matter by an expert and everything I didn't understand was explained to me. My thoughts were taken seriously and I always felt that everything was being negotiated for my own benefit. Billy Jenks kindly offered to ring the other party to explain the new terms because it would be kinder on them and this way it wouldn't affect my future relationship with them and everything would be explained better and more coherent over the phone rather than on an email. I believe that I was treated very kindly, and the services they provided were excellent from negotiating on my behalf to explaining everything to me, I was very happy with the outcome.
Maya GhazalAviation Engineering Student and advocate for refugee rights
Ignition Law recently helped me sell Mathigon, a small EdTech startup based in the UK, to Amplify, a publisher based in New York – working on everything from the initial term sheet to due diligence documents and the final share purchase agreement. Helen Gerrard and her team were fantastic, working through weekends, while on vacations, and late in the evening to accommodate different time zones. Under significant time pressure, they managed to quickly assemble a small team covering corporate, commercial, employment and IP law, and help with all the different aspects of the acquisition process.
Philipp LegnerFounder and CEO
Philipp Legner
"Thank you for your support this year! You have been fantastic and diligent in all the work. I appreciate your valuable advice and input to help us solve some complex matters. You were always there to support us on urgent requests!”
Scarlett ZhangHead of Risk Management & Compliance, Redeemeum
We appreciated the client-centric approach with knowledgeable people giving practical and easy-to-understand advice. No matter who you deal with, the culture and commitment to excellence is the same. Thank you all.
Andrew MorrisonFounder and BD Director
Ignition Law has supported our business for the last 18 months in structuring a VCT fundraise and then executing the spinout of a software start-up from our consultancy business. It's been great working with such a personable, pragmatic and technically strong team. Ex-Magic Circle lawyers operating like an agile tech business... Highly recommended. Thank you again to the Ignition Team.
Mike BobroffBusiness Improvement Director
Ignition Law were both extremely helpful and extremely clear - which is a very useful combination for a start up.
Sporting Goods Industry Start-up
"Alexis, was always responsive to our questions and concerns. She explained legal concepts and procedures in a way that was easy to understand, and provided us with valuable guidance and advice throughout the entire process".
Hamsa HussainBogenfels Gold DMCC

Why Ignition Law

Our clients range from software start-ups, medical technology firms and university spinouts, to social enterprises, investment funds and established companies across a number of sectors, many of which seek sophisticated advice to help them scale. For the better part of a decade, these clients have put their trust in us to provide advice that’s not only technically spot on, but commercially relevant and cost effective, and we take pride in our ability to consistently deliver fast, flexible and forward-thinking legal, commercial, and strategic advice.

In addition, as already mentioned, our lawyers have worked at many of the world’s most high profile international law firms and corporations, meaning you’ll have access to senior, market-leading experts who are used to providing nothing less than the highest levels of client service.

 

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Get In touch

If this sounds like it might help to transform the way you approach legal services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We’d be very happy to arrange a no obligation call so that we can better understand your needs and create a bespoke proposition for you to consider.













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