For Jones, the transition into fractional GC work wasn’t a strategic career pivot, but rather a response to a clear and unmet market she identified while working in-house.

“It started when I was working in an in-house role as a sole legal counsel. I was utilising external counsel for various work, for advice, regulatory work, overflow work and noticed pretty quickly when I was there that there wasn’t a lot of choice for small- to medium-sized businesses to leverage that type of support,” she said.

After seeking advice from “top-end of town firms” regarding the industry’s regulatory changes at the time, Jones quickly recognised that many of the “suppliers and partners that we were working with weren’t presented in any way legally”.

Noticing that many businesses lacked in-house counsel due to an inability to “afford the high fees associated with having every contract and email reviewed,” Jones recognised an opportunity to provide valuable support.

In October 2021, Jones launched her own practice to meet this growing demand, working with businesses a few days each week in a way that allowed her to become embedded in the very “fabric” of their operations.

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Starting her practice followed a decade of experience in the corporate sector, which gave Jones a crucial advantage as she transitioned into this new phase of her legal career.

She shared that she “understood how the business worked, what hurdles need to be overcome, [and] how it works structurally”, which were insights that, she noted, many lawyers in similar roles “haven’t had that exposure to”.

“I think that’s been especially helpful for my clients now as a fractional general counsel because you can see both sides of the coin. So you’re there as their general counsel and as their confidant and legal support. But you also understand quite well because you’ve also been in the trenches in those roles,” she said.

At the time, Jones admitted that when she first began working within this domain, she wasn’t familiar with what the concept of “fractional [meant] at the time”.

It wasn’t until about a year into her practice that Jones first encountered the term “fractional”, after discovering supportive communities that “educated” her on the concept – at which point she quickly realised she had been operating in that capacity “all along”.

Although Jones noted that her move into the fractional GC space wasn’t a “deliberate foray,” she expressed appreciation for the title, stating that “it’s certainly been great to have that term that we can use that isn’t just within law, but it’s also across other disciplines”.