Scaling a business is exciting. There’s momentum, ambition and often a growing sense that things are starting to click. You’re raising capital. Signing new partners. Protecting what you’ve built. But one thing that can trip up even the most promising businesses is a shaky legal foundation.

It’s easy to see why legal doesn’t always feel urgent in the early stages. There are products to launch, customers to win, teams to build. But when legal is left as an afterthought, the consequences often show up just when things are getting serious. A funding delay. A contract dispute. A missed opportunity to move into a new market.

At The Legal Director, we place lawyers with extensive in-house experience into ambitious businesses to act as fractional General Counsel. It’s senior legal support that fits the stage you’re at. Someone who works as part of the team. Someone who thinks commercially, not just legally. And someone who can help build the legal systems and structures that support long-term, sustainable growth.

The problem with waiting

Many of the companies we work with come to us after something has broken. That’s not because they’ve been careless. Often, they’ve simply been focused on growth and assumed legal could wait.

But legal is not just about reducing risk. It’s also about building resilience. It gives your business the clarity and confidence to move faster, attract investment and seize opportunities.

Common blind spots in growing businesses

Some of the most frequent legal gaps we see include:

• Founders without proper shareholder agreements
• Key customer or supplier contracts that don’t reflect business realities
• Unclear IP ownership, especially where freelancers or collaborators are involved
• Employment policies that haven’t caught up with flexible or remote working
• Weak data protection measures, especially in tech and service-based businesses

These issues may seem small. But they can quickly become serious. And they’re often uncovered during due diligence or when trying to move quickly on a deal or expansion.

Imagine a better approach

Imagine a founder who had been burned by a dispute with a supplier in a previous business. This time around, they choose to bring in a fractional GC early. The contracts are clear. Roles and responsibilities are defined. Disputes are avoided not because of luck, but because the groundwork has been done properly.

Or imagine a scale-up on the brink of securing investment, only for the deal to stall because of confusion around their cap table or missing IP documentation. With the right legal support in place early on, those obstacles could have been spotted and resolved before they became barriers.

Legal should never be a handbrake. When it’s embedded early and shaped around the business, it becomes a tool for growth. It supports good decisions. It gives the business confidence to act. And it reduces the number of surprises when external partners start looking closely.

Why fractional works

Hiring a full-time General Counsel can feel like too big a step, especially when the business is still scaling. There may not be enough work to justify it. The cost might feel out of reach. And the timing might not be right.

A fractional GC gives you the legal thinking and experience you need without the full-time overhead. It’s flexible. It’s affordable. And it grows with your business.

It also gives you access to someone who knows what it takes to scale a company. Not just from a legal point of view, but from a commercial one. Someone who understands how to get deals over the line. How to spot risk without blocking progress. And how to help founders grow with confidence.

Strong foundations support faster growth

Legal doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. It just needs to be right for your business. Starting with the right frameworks in place means you can scale faster, with fewer surprises.

A fractional GC brings the senior perspective that helps you plan, not just react. It gives you a solid legal base to build on. And it makes your business more resilient, more investable and more able to grow in the direction you want.

If you want to move fast, you need to be ready. Legal is part of that. And it’s far easier to build it in than to fix it later.

This article was written by Sarah Clark, Chief Growth Officer at The Legal Director.