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.
Your company’s lawyer, before you can justify hiring one
Seed-stage companies in San Francisco hit legal questions every week. A customer sends back a redlined MSA. An offer letter needs to go out today. An investor asks for documents you have not thought about since incorporation. It is too much work to leave templates, and nowhere near enough to justify a full-time general counsel.
That gap is where a fractional general counsel fits. You get an experienced startup lawyer on a predictable monthly plan to handle the recurring legal work your company has as it comes up, so nothing piles up unsigned, unreviewed, or unfiled.
Stealth Legal serves San Francisco startups remotely from Sacramento and meets in person when it helps.
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.
Free Consult. Thirty minutes to map your legal backlog: what is signed, what is pending, and what is quietly becoming a problem.
Flat monthly plan. A set monthly fee covers the recurring work. You know the cost before the month starts, not after the invoice.
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
Flat monthly fee, scoped to your stage and volume. No hourly meter. No surprise invoices.
Every plan includes a set-block contract review, employment and fundraising support, and direct access to a senior lawyer. Larger scopes are priced up front, never by the hour.
What this looks like in practice
A seed-stage SaaS company in San Francisco, with eight people, has a week that is more typical than unusual. On Monday, their largest prospective customer returns a redlined MSA with a security addendum and a data processing agreement attached. On Wednesday, they need to send offer letters to two California engineers before a competing offer lands. On Friday, an investor doing diligence asks for board consents going back to incorporation.
Without a fractional GC, that week means three separate agreements at $1,400 an hour, or a founder doing legal work at midnight. With one, it is all inside the monthly plan: the MSA redline comes back within days with the DPA checked against the company’s actual data practices, the offer letters go out the same day, and the consents are already organized because housekeeping is part of the plan.
Illustrative example only. Not a client matter or a guarantee of result.
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
-
Outside counsel bills by the hour for matters you bring to them. A fractional GC works inside your business on a flat monthly plan, handling the recurring legal work before it becomes a matter: contracts, hiring, fundraising, privacy, and housekeeping, all from a lawyer who already knows your company.
-
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 a flat monthly fee scoped to your stage and work volume. You approve the scope and the price before anything begins.
-
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.
-
That is the plan working. When your volume justifies a full-time hire, we help you define the role, vet candidates, and hand over clean files, organized contracts, and a current data room, so your first GC starts ahead instead of digging.
Talk to the lawyer who would do the work
Book a free 30-minute consult. Bring your backlog; leave with a plan.