What a fractional General Counsel actually costs in Canada

Most firms will not tell you. The honest answer has three parts: what a full-time GC costs, what outside counsel costs, and what sits between them.

The full-time comparison

A general counsel at a Canadian company with real contract volume is a $180,000 to $250,000 base salary, before bonus, before benefits, before payroll taxes and before the recruiter fee that got them in the door. Fully loaded, you are usually past $250,000 in year one. That is the number a founder or CFO is weighing when they ask whether it is time to hire.

It is also the wrong number to weigh alone, because a single GC does not solve every seat. If your business needs a named Privacy Officer, a compliance program, and a corporate secretary who keeps the minute book defensible, one hire covers maybe two of those well and the rest by improvisation.

The hourly comparison

Outside counsel at a national firm runs $450 to $900 an hour for a partner, $300 to $500 for an associate. The trouble is not the rate; it is that nobody can predict the number of hours, and everyone in the arrangement knows it. A busy quarter produces an invoice that no one budgeted for, and the natural response, calling your lawyer less, is exactly the behaviour that creates the problems you retain a lawyer to avoid.

Hourly billing prices the input. Companies want to buy the outcome: someone accountable for legal risk, at a number they can plan around.

What fractional actually costs

The fractional model prices a seat, not an hour. At Murjis a seat is $2,450 a month, which includes one full counsel day, and that is the same price whether the seat is General Counsel, Privacy Officer, Compliance Officer, Corporate Secretary or Independent Director. Added seats are $2,250 each, and additional counsel days are $1,650, which works out to about $206 an hour, at the same rate however short the notice, subject to availability. Days are requested in advance and confirmed; work done outside a booked day is billed at the standard hourly rate.

Annualized, a single seat is $29,400. Against $250,000 fully loaded for one full-time hire, that is roughly twelve percent of the cost, and it buys you a lawyer more senior than the one you could afford to hire outright.

Where the model works, and where it does not

Fractional works when the company has steady, predictable legal work that needs an accountable owner: recurring contracts, a compliance program that has to stay current, filings that have to happen, a board that meets. It works when the alternative is nobody in the seat at all.

It does not work if you need someone in the building forty hours a week. A company running constant litigation, a regulated business in an enforcement posture, or a team in the middle of a bet-the-company transaction needs full-time attention, and an honest fractional lawyer will tell you so rather than take the mandate.

The questions worth asking any provider

• Is the fee published? If a firm will not tell you the number before a call, the number depends on what they think you will pay.
• Who actually does the work? A named person you meet, or whoever is available that week.
• Will they take the appointment? Being named as Privacy Officer or Compliance Officer means accepting accountability. Advisors advise; officers are named.
• What happens when the month is busier than expected? The answer should be a known rate, not a renegotiation.
• What happens when it is quieter? Month-to-month terms mean you are not paying for capacity you are not using.

This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create a solicitor-client relationship. The law changes and its application depends on your circumstances. Speak to a lawyer about your situation.