There for you when you're ready to make it official: LLCs, corporations, nonprofits, cap tables, founder and operating agreements, and equity plans. Set up right from day one, built to support you as you grow.
Fractional General Counsel
Your general counsel, fractional.
GC Bench embeds senior legal counsel in growing businesses and mission driven organizations. Built for growth, solutions oriented, AI powered with a human touch.
- Yale Law School
- Kirkland & Ellis
- Former In-House GC
Founder's note
Most companies meet their first general counsel the week something goes wrong. A contract signed in a hurry, a termination handled by instinct, a data question nobody owned. By then the cheap answers are gone. GC Bench exists so that growing companies get the counsel of a seasoned general counsel years earlier, at a price that makes keeping one close an obvious call.
How a fractional GC works
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1.1
Intro call
A direct conversation about your business, your goals, and your legal priorities. Bring your two most pressing legal questions.
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1.2
Scoped engagement
An engagement sized to your volume and risk: contracts, employment, privacy, and whatever else comes up. Hourly or flat monthly fee. Tailored to your budget. No surprises.
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1.3
Embedded counsel
Your GC joins the team. Slack, standing calls, board prep, deal rooms. Legal stops being a bottleneck and starts moving at the speed of the business.
What's covered
You have a lot on your plate. We handle the legal side, including:
Customer agreements, vendor deals, partnerships, and the redlines in between. Negotiations closed on business timelines, not law firm timelines, with terms you actually understand.
Offers, policies, contractor lines, performance exits. The hard calls answered before they become claims, and a steady hand when one does.
Data practices, vendor security terms, incident readiness, and compliance that keeps pace with the products you ship and the states you sell into.
Letters of intent, due diligence, purchase agreements, merger agreements, and disclosure schedules. A facilitator who keeps your deal moving.
Contract management tools, electronic signature workflows, and the AI tools reshaping how legal work gets done. Selected, implemented, and managed to keep Legal running smoothly.
One counsel, every function of the business.
- HR
- IT & Engineering
- Finance
- Product
- Sales
- Customer Experience
“Legal should be a strategic partner, not a cost center.”
/s/ Demetre Klebaner
Founder & Principal, GC Bench
The counsel
Demetre Klebaner
Demetre started his career at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the largest law firms in the world, then served in government before going in house as General Counsel of a private company. He has sat on every side of the table a growing business will ever face.
He holds a JD from Yale Law School and a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He founded GC Bench to turn legal from a cost center into a strategic partner: modern, tech enabled, cost conscious counsel that businesses of every size can afford to keep close.
GC Bench runs on a fusion of modern AI tooling and top tier legal judgment. Speed and scale from the technology, precision from experienced counsel. Every answer that reaches you carries a lawyer's name and accountability.
- JD, Yale Law SchoolEducation
- BA, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignEducation
- Kirkland & EllisCareer start
- Government servicePublic sector
- General Counsel, Alpine Investors portfolio companyIn house
- Illinois barAdmitted 2016
Questions leaders ask
What does fractional general counsel mean?
A general counsel (GC) is the primary lawyer inside a company, a partner who learns the business rather than just advising periodically. “Fractional” means you get that same lawyer, same seat at the table, same accountability, scoped to what you actually need, at a fraction of the cost of a full time executive hire.
How is this different from outside counsel at a law firm?
Outside counsel is often engaged for a specific matter, and the relationship ends once that work is done. A fractional GC is a continuous partner, sitting inside the business, spotting issues before they become questions, and bringing in outside firms when a specialist is genuinely needed.
Do you replace our outside law firms?
No. Specialists still handle specialist work: litigation, patents, tax. Your fractional GC decides when to bring them in, briefs them properly, and keeps the engagement efficient.
We already have a lawyer we call sometimes. Why change?
Keep them. A fractional GC coordinates that relationship, decides when to escalate, and handles the everyday legal work.
What does “AI powered” actually mean here?
Modern AI tools can take the first pass at research, review, and drafting, which is why the work moves fast and costs less. Judgment is never delegated. Every answer you receive has a lawyer behind it.
What does an engagement look like and cost?
Engagements are scoped around your volume and risk, and priced as a flat monthly fee or hourly, tailored to your budget. Exact pricing is set together after the intro call.
Book a meeting with Demetre
Pick a time that works for you. The intro call is thirty minutes. Bring your two most pressing legal questions.
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