Fractional General Counsel for San Francisco Startups

One senior lawyer for your contracts, hiring, fundraising, and privacy, on a flat monthly fee. No ticket queue, no rotating associates, no $400,000 hire.

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Your company’s lawyer, before you can justify hiring one

A seed-stage week in San Francisco rarely brings one legal question. It brings several at once: a customer's MSA comes back with a DPA attached, a new California hire needs an offer letter and an equity grant, an investor's diligence list lands in your inbox, and a handful of smaller decisions need a lawyer's judgment before Friday.

Stealth Legal handles that week as one ongoing relationship, on a flat monthly fee, with the same senior lawyer every time. We serve San Francisco startups remotely from Sacramento and meet in person when it helps.

For an overview of how fractional general counsel works, see our fractional general counsel page.

Cityscape view of San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge silhouetted against a sunset sky, with mountains in the background and buildings illuminated in the foreground.

What a fractional GC handles

  • Sales agreements, MSAs, NDAs, and vendor terms are reviewed and negotiated in days, not weeks, so deals keep moving.

  • SAFE and priced-round paperwork, investor diligence requests, and data room hygiene, so a term sheet never stalls on your side of the table.

  • Offer letters, contractor agreements, equity grants, and the California employment rules that trip up fast-growing teams.

  • CCPA/CPRA applicability, privacy policies, and data processing addenda enterprise customers insist on before they sign.

  • Board consents, stock ledgers, and option grants are kept current, so diligence is an export, not a fire drill.

Street scene with cars and buildings, including the Transamerica Pyramid skyscraper in San Francisco, California, daytime with blue sky and white clouds.

  1. Free Consult. Thirty minutes to map your legal backlog: what is signed, what is pending, and what is quietly becoming a problem.

  2. Flat monthly plan. One fee, set before the month starts.

    Direct access. You call, text, or email the attorney directly. Same-day response. No intake forms, no ticket numbers, no associate you have never met reading your file for the first time.

How it Works

From $3,000/month

Scoped to your stage and volume. Every plan includes contract review, hiring and equity support, fundraising help, and direct access to a senior lawyer.

Larger projects are quoted up front.

What this looks like in practice

A seed-stage SaaS company in San Francisco, eight people. On Monday, its largest prospect returns a redlined MSA with a DPA attached. On Wednesday, two engineers in California need offer letters, and the founders want their option grants documented properly. On Friday, a lead investor's diligence list asks for board consents going back to incorporation. In between, a few smaller calls come up: whether to accept a change to the limitation of liability, how to answer a customer's security question, and whether a contractor should really be an employee.

Without a fractional GC, that week means three separate agreements at $1,400 an hour, or a founder doing all the legal work at midnight. With a fractional GC, the same lawyer handles all of it within the monthly plan. The MSA and DPA get reviewed against how the product actually handles data, the offer letters and grant paperwork go out on schedule, and the diligence documents are ready because corporate housekeeping is already part of the plan.

Illustrative example only. Not a client matter or a guarantee of results.

One senior lawyer, not a queue

AI-native legal firms run on volume: you submit a ticket, and whoever is on shift picks it up. The lawyer reviewing your MSA this month has never seen your cap table and will not remember your risk tolerance next month.

With Stealth Legal, every question goes to the same senior lawyer who knows your contracts, your investors, and how you like to handle risk. That continuity is not a nice-to-have. It is what makes the advice fast and the judgment sound. The lawyer who negotiated your last three customer contracts knows exactly which terms you have already given ground on.

Frequently Asked Questions

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  • Usually three things start happening at once: you are signing real customers, you are hiring in California, and you are raising or about to raise. If legal questions are landing on a founder’s desk more than once a week, the plan pays for itself in founder hours alone.

  • Plans start at $3,000 a month, based on your stage and volume. We confirm the scope and price after a free consult.

  • Yes, Stealth Legal serves San Francisco startups remotely from Sacramento and meets in person when it helps, for board meetings, negotiations, or working sessions that go better in a room.

Talk to the lawyer who would do the work

Book a free 30-minute consult. Bring your backlog; leave with a plan.