What is a fractional legal function, and when does a tech company need one?
A fractional legal function is senior in-house legal and governance support that a company buys part-time, instead of hiring a full-time general counsel. It suits technology companies that sign contracts, handle personal data or adopt AI every week, but can't yet justify a full-time lawyer. It runs your legal strategy, workflow and budget. Work that needs a licensed law firm still goes to one.
Key takeaways
- It replaces the gap between "no lawyer" and "full-time general counsel", not your law firm.
- The value is continuity: one person who knows your contracts, data and risk positions.
- Typical scope: commercial and technology contracts, privacy and data protection, AI governance, and incident readiness.
- Litigation, formal legal opinions and regulated legal advice still belong with a licensed law firm.
- The clearest sign you need one: contracts are waiting on legal, and nobody owns the positions you keep conceding.
What does "fractional legal function" mean?
It means you get a senior in-house lawyer's judgment for a fraction of the week. The person sits on your side of the table, learns how your business makes money, and handles legal work the way an in-house team would.
It is not an outsourced law firm. A law firm starts each matter from zero and bills by the hour. A fractional function builds up knowledge of your contracts, your data flows and your risk appetite over time, and that knowledge compounds.
What does a fractional legal function cover?
For technology companies, the work tends to fall into four areas:
- Commercial and technology contracts. SaaS, licensing, outsourcing, vendor and procurement contracts, partnership agreements, NDAs and data processing agreements. The job is triage: spend negotiating effort on the clauses that actually allocate risk.
- AI governance and AI contracts. AI vendor agreements, training-data and IP clauses, and responsible-AI frameworks that fit how your teams already work.
- Data protection and privacy. Singapore PDPA, GDPR and wider APAC compliance, consent design and data governance built into operations.
- Cybersecurity and incident response. Incident-response playbooks, notification readiness and vendor-risk management, prepared before anything goes wrong.
What doesn't it cover?
Some work needs a licensed law firm. Litigation, arbitration, formal legal opinions and regulated legal advice sit there. A good fractional function scopes that work, picks the right firm, and keeps the budget under control. It does not pretend to be the firm.
What are the signs a company needs one?
- Sales deals wait on contract review, and the delay costs revenue.
- You concede the same clauses on every deal because nobody owns your standard positions.
- You're adopting AI tools and can't answer where your data goes.
- A customer's security or privacy questionnaire arrives and nobody knows who should answer it.
- Legal spend arrives as a surprise invoice, not a planned line in the budget.
How does an AI-native fractional function differ?
At Perfraction, routine review, clause extraction and first-pass markup run on an AI-native pipeline under a lawyer's supervision. That moves agreements at deal speed and keeps senior time for the judgment calls. The accountability stays with the human. The AI speeds up the first pass. It does not sign off.
Who is behind Perfraction?
Perfraction is led by Joshua Woo, a Singapore-qualified lawyer (Advocate & Solicitor, non-practising) with CIPP/E and CIPP/A certifications. He was previously Goldman Sachs' APAC legal lead for AI, cyber and privacy, and before that worked at Mayer Brown and Dentons Rodyk.
Frequently asked questions
Is a fractional legal function the same as a law firm?
No. A law firm is engaged matter by matter and bills for legal advice. A fractional legal function works inside your business on an ongoing basis, owns your legal workflow and budget, and brings in a law firm when a matter needs one.
How is a fractional legal function priced?
Usually as a retainer, a fixed-scope project, or ongoing part-time support. The point is a predictable monthly cost instead of an open hourly meter.
When should a startup hire a full-time general counsel instead?
When legal work fills a full working week on its own, or when regulation requires a dedicated in-house legal officer. Until then, part-time senior coverage is usually the better use of budget.
This article is general information, not legal advice. It reflects the position as at the date of publication. A plain-text version for AI assistants is at /blog/what-is-a-fractional-legal-function.md.