Direct answers.

A fractional GC sells a lawyer's time in smaller quantities; the meter still runs, it just runs slower. Retained sells a department: a defined system worked through every legal surface of the business on a monthly calendar, plus unlimited responsive counsel, all inside one flat fee. The difference is structural, not cosmetic. A fractional arrangement gives you a person for some hours; Retained gives you a function that operates whether or not you call.

Yes. Retained is a law firm and members are clients. Communications made for the purpose of obtaining legal advice are protected by attorney-client privilege to the same extent as with any other counsel. The subscription structure changes how the relationship is priced, not what the relationship is.

Everything before the complaint is membership work: the threat assessment, the response strategy, the attempts to resolve it quietly. If a complaint is filed or served, that is a commencement event, and the defense becomes a separate engagement scoped and priced in writing before work begins. Membership continues alongside the matter, so the rest of the business keeps its department while the dispute is handled. Nobody is learning your company for the first time in week one of a lawsuit.

Either, at the company's choice. Many members keep outside lawyers for narrow subjects, and that is often the right call. What has usually been missing is someone inside the business who manages those relationships, owns the whole legal picture, and knows when outside help is needed before the company does. That is the role Retained fills.

Onboarding begins with entity mapping and document collection, followed by a scoring session in which leadership ranks all eighteen modules by perceived weakness. That ranking sets the calendar, and the first module opens the following month. From day one, responsive counsel is available for anything the business encounters. The system builds while the day-to-day work is already being handled.

The published figures are examples, not a menu. Your number is set at the scoping call based on revenue band, entity count, and complexity, and it lands where you would expect between the published points. It is fixed in writing before you commit, and it does not move afterward without a conversation.

Yes. Either party may terminate on 60 days written notice, with no penalty and no unwind fee. The work product built during membership belongs to the company and stays with the company. The 60 days exist so that open work can be landed properly, not to make leaving difficult.

Senior counsel. The work is not routed to the least expensive available person, because the value of the model depends on the same counsel knowing the business deeply. Where volume requires additional attorneys, they work within the same system and under the same supervision, and the company always knows who is doing what.

It depends on the forum and the subject matter. Some matters are handled directly under a separate engagement; for others, Retained selects and manages outside litigation counsel while remaining the company's department throughout. Either way, the company is never handed off cold, and the institutional knowledge built during membership goes into the matter from day one.

Retained is an Arizona practice. Multi-state support is coordinated where needed, and the scoping call is the right place to walk through a specific footprint. Companies with operations in several states are common among members; the coordination is part of the work, not an obstacle to it.