Your business needs partner-level legal expertise. It does not need a full-time hire, a law firm retainer that grows faster than your revenue, or a generalist who treats AI governance as a box to tick.
RMOK Legal provides fractional general counsel services to scaling companies, overstretched in-house teams and founders closing the deals that define their trajectory. Every engagement has a defined scope, a fixed fee, and a named senior lawyer. SRA-regulated. City of London.
RMOK Legal provides fractional general counsel services across the UK and internationally, with a core specialism in AI governance, technology contracting and commercial law. Led by Rory O'Keeffe, SCL-accredited IT lawyer, former Partner at Matheson (European law firm) and former Director of Legal Services at Accenture. SRA-regulated. Based at 60 Cannon Street, City of London.
A fractional general counsel is not a one-size engagement. The right model depends on where your business sits today, what legal risk you are carrying, and what outcome you need.
If you are not sure which model fits, that is what the discovery call is for. Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation.
You have outgrown the "call a solicitor when something goes wrong" model. Contracts are getting more complex. Regulatory questions are piling up. You need a senior lawyer who understands your business, not one who picks up your file cold every time.
Growth Retainer, from £2,500 +VAT/mo →Your legal team is overstretched, a key colleague is absent, or you need specialist AI, technology or data protection expertise that sits outside your team's current skill set. You have been here before. The last time, the firm sent someone who needed three weeks of onboarding and still did not understand your business.
Team Support, from £4,000 +VAT per project →You are negotiating the commercial agreements that will shape your business for the next three to five years. Outsourcing contracts, SaaS deals, licensing arrangements, cross-border M&A. The other side has a legal team. You need someone who has sat across that table at Fortune 500 level and knows exactly where the risk sits.
Deal Support, from £5,000 +VAT per transaction →The EU AI Act, GDPR, DORA, NIS2 and the wider digital regulatory landscape are creating legal obligations that most businesses have not yet fully mapped. You need a lawyer who does not just understand the regulation but understands how to apply it to your contracts, your vendor relationships and your board reporting.
AI and Regulatory Advisory, from £4,500 +VAT →Not sure you need a fractional GC? If your business is pre-revenue, pre-seed or at seed stage and you need specific legal deliverables rather than ongoing counsel, our fixed-price startup legal packages may be a better fit. Same lawyer. Same quality. Defined scope and price from £1,500 +VAT.
View startup packages →Five steps from first contact to completed engagement. You know what happens at each stage, what it costs, and what you receive.
30 minutes, no charge. We establish your situation, your legal priorities, and which engagement model fits. If RMOK Legal is not the right fit, we will tell you that too.
You receive a written scope document and a fixed fee before any work begins. The scope sets out exactly what you receive, what is excluded, and what happens if additional work is needed. You sign off before we start.
Every engagement is led personally by Rory O'Keeffe. Not a team of associates. Not a junior lawyer doing the work while a partner signs the cover letter. The person you speak to on the discovery call is the person who delivers your work. Where an engagement requires additional specialist capacity, RMOK Legal draws on a vetted network of senior lawyers contracted to the firm, so you always know who is working on your matter and why.
If the work reveals something outside the original scope, we flag it, agree a separate fixed fee, and proceed only with your approval. There are no surprise invoices and no retrospective charges.
Retainer engagements continue on a rolling monthly basis with a quarterly review. Project engagements close with a written action plan and handover documentation. No pressure. No lock-in beyond the minimum term.
Every engagement is led by Rory O'Keeffe, SRA-regulated solicitor, 20+ years of commercial and technology law experience, former Partner at Matheson, former Director of Legal Services at Accenture. Where an engagement requires additional specialist expertise, RMOK Legal draws on a vetted network of senior lawyers contracted to the firm. For contentious matters, established referral arrangements with specialist litigation firms are in place. You always know who is working on your matter.
RMOK Legal does not bill by the hour. Every engagement has a defined scope and a fixed fee. The comparison point is not what another lawyer charges per hour. It is what the outcome costs your business if it goes wrong.
For scaling businesses that need ongoing senior legal oversight without a full-time hire or an unpredictable legal spend
+VAT/month · Minimum 3 months · Scope confirmed before engagement begins
A single misaligned liability cap, unchecked auto-renewal clause or missing IP assignment provision can generate dispute costs of £50,000 to £500,000. The retainer exists to catch those before they land.
According to current UK market data, the total employer cost of a full-time General Counsel (salary, employer NI, pension, benefits and recruitment fees) ranges from £175,000 to £310,000 per year. The Growth Retainer provides partner-level oversight from £30,000 per year.
Source: Legal 500, Robert Half Legal Salary Guide, Hays Legal Salary Survey 2025/26.
For businesses closing high-value commercial transactions where the stakes justify getting it right the first time
+VAT per transaction · Fixed fee confirmed before work begins
The cost of a poorly negotiated commercial agreement surfaces 12 to 24 months later when a liability cap is tested or a termination provision turns out to be unenforceable. Remediation routinely exceeds ten times the original deal support cost.
Based on published rate data, a City law firm partner handling equivalent transaction scope would typically charge £8,000 to £15,000 for comparable work. RMOK Legal has closed over 150 major transactions across more than 40 industries.
Source: Solicitors' Guideline Hourly Rates 2026 (London 1, Grade A); Legal 500 rate benchmarks.
For in-house legal teams that need embedded specialist capacity from someone who has actually run an in-house function
+VAT per project · Scope and duration confirmed before engagement begins
Based on current agency rate data, a locum or contract lawyer placed through a recruitment agency typically costs £500 to £800 per day with significantly less seniority, plus a 20-25% placement fee if the role converts to permanent. The Team Support model provides partner-level capacity at a fixed cost with no agency margin, no recruitment risk, and no extended onboarding period.
Rory O'Keeffe has operated as Director of Legal Services at Accenture, managing a legal team at a Fortune Global 500 company. The support comes from someone who understands in-house legal operations from the inside.
Source: Robert Half Legal Salary Guide 2025/26; Hays Legal Market Update.
For businesses building, deploying or procuring AI that need a lawyer who understands the technology, the regulation and how both affect your contracts
+VAT · Fixed fee or retainer · Scope confirmed before engagement begins
The EU AI Act is the most significant technology regulation since GDPR. Fines for non-compliance reach €35 million or 7% of worldwide annual turnover. The cost of this engagement is a fraction of the cost of a single regulatory inquiry.
This service is led by an SCL-accredited IT lawyer who sits on the SCL AI Committee, speaks at leading industry events, and is the author of AI Advantage (2025). There are very few practitioners in the UK with this combination of expertise.
Available alongside any engagement. Each is scoped and priced before work begins. No hidden costs.
A defined, finite piece of legal advisory work scoped to a specific question or issue. Written advice with clear conclusions and recommended next steps.
One commercial agreement (up to 30 pages) with redlined mark-up, risk commentary and one advisory call.
One-hour presentation on AI legal risk, EU AI Act obligations or commercial contract risk. Slides and briefing included.
Up to three standard contract templates for your most common transaction types, each with a short negotiating guide. Yours to own and adapt.
Monthly briefing on AI and digital regulatory developments. Written update plus one 30-minute call. Minimum 3 months.
"Rory O'Keeffe goes the extra mile and is always focused and pragmatic."Legal 500 UK, Information Technology 2023
"A safe pair of hands on our most complex commercial deals."Fortune 500 Technology Client
Some fractional GC providers route work to teams of associates or contract with a panel of lawyers. At RMOK Legal, every engagement is led personally by Rory O'Keeffe. Former Partner at Matheson. Former Director of Legal at Accenture. Recognised in Legal 500. The person on the discovery call is the person who does your work. Where additional specialist capacity is needed, RMOK Legal draws on a vetted network of senior lawyers contracted to the firm. For contentious matters, established referral arrangements with specialist litigation firms are in place. You always know who is involved and why.
Every engagement has a written scope document and a fixed fee, confirmed before a single hour is spent. If the work reveals something outside scope, we flag it, agree a separate fixed fee, and proceed only with your sign-off. The invoice you receive at the end matches the one you agreed at the start. If you have been burned by open-ended retainers or scope creep invoices, this model exists because of exactly that problem.
RMOK Legal is one of the few fractional GC providers with deep, current, accredited specialism in AI law. Rory is an SCL-accredited IT lawyer, sits on the SCL AI Committee, and has spoken at the SCL Data Conference, LegalTechTalk and the Eyes-Off Data Summit. If your business touches AI, the difference between a generalist who has read the EU AI Act and a specialist who advises on it daily is the difference between compliance and exposure.
Not all fractional GC providers are regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Rory O'Keeffe is. That means professional conduct standards, a formal complaints procedure, and professional indemnity insurance. For enterprise customers, investors and acquirers asking questions about your legal arrangements, the regulatory distinction matters. It is also your protection if anything goes wrong.
Many fractional GCs come from private practice. Rory has operated at Director level inside a Fortune 500 company, managing a legal team handling £2bn+ in annual contract value across 40+ industries. The advice you receive is informed by the reality of running a legal function under commercial pressure, not just the view from the other side of the table.
If you answer yes to any of these, our startup legal packages might be a better fit for where you are today:
If any of those apply, start here:
View startup legal packages, from £1,500 +VAT →If you are not sure, book a discovery call and we will work it out together. There is no wrong door.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call with Rory O'Keeffe. No obligation, no pitch. A direct conversation about your business and which engagement model makes sense.
Book a discovery call →