Frive
In-House General Counsel (GC) Fractional Role (2 days per week)
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Frive
At Frive, we’re redefining what food should be – real, wholesome and made without artificial stuff, because your body deserves better than the ultra-processed products that flood supermarket shelves.
Our mission is simple: to fuel you with real nutrition that supports your health and vitality – not just for today, but for the long run.
Summary
Are you commercially minded, pragmatic, and solution-driven? We are looking for our first in-house General Counsel (GC) to join us as the business scales. This is not intended to be a narrow, back-office compliance function limited to reviewing contracts.
The General Counsel will act as a close partner to the CEO and wider C-suite: a trusted advisor on legal risk, a guardian of governance standards, and an active contributor to sound decision-making as Frive grows from an entrepreneurial business into a larger, more mature organization. This would require understanding and experience of fundraising, investment, and M&A activity.
Overall someone who can contribute actively, bringing their knowledge of scaling businesses to help shape the next phase of our development. This is a fractional role (2 days per week).
Key Responsibilities
Commercial & Contracts
- Draft, review, and negotiate a wide range of commercial contracts, including supplier, distribution, retail, licensing, and partnership agreements.
- Provide clear, practical guidance to the executive team on contractual risk, balancing legal protection with commercial pace.
- Build and maintain a suite of template agreements and playbooks to enable the business to self-serve on lower-risk matters.
Corporate Governance & Compliance
- Support the CEO in maintaining strong standards of corporate governance and statutory filings.
- Ensure the business maintains compliance with relevant company, consumer, food safety, advertising, and competition law.
- Advise on corporate structuring, shareholder matters, and any fundraising, investment, or M&A activity.
Risk, Regulatory & Data Protection
- Help the business identify, understand, and respond to key legal and regulatory risks affecting performance, reputation, or long-term viability, including supply chain, product liability, and food safety exposure.
- Own data protection and privacy compliance (including UK GDPR), advising on data handling across customer, employee, and supplier relationships.
- Maintain visibility of critical legal risks and appropriate mitigation actions, including through use of the risk register.
- Raise concerns clearly and constructively where significant issues, conflicts, or unresolved risks could materially affect the business, recommending intervention where needed.
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Intellectual Property & Brand Protection
- Protect Frive's brand, trademarks, and other intellectual property, both domestically and as the business expands internationally.
- Advise on IP considerations in product development, packaging, and marketing.
External Representation & Stakeholder Management
- Represent Frive in strategically important external legal matters, including with investors, regulators, and key commercial partners.
- Manage relationships with external law firms and other advisors, ensuring cost-effective and high-quality external support where specialist expertise is required.
- Support the Chair and CEO on Board-level legal and governance matters as required.
Candidate Profile
Experience & Credibility
- Qualified solicitor (England & Wales) or equivalent, with significant post-qualification experience (PQE) gained in-house and/or in private practice.
- Proven experience as General Counsel, Head of Legal, or senior in-house counsel, ideally within a consumer, food, or retail. Experience within fast-scaling brands is critical.
- Experience managing commercial, regulatory, and food-safety-related legal risk within an organization delivering a quality, food-safety-critical consumer product.
- A track record of operating effectively in a fractional, part-time, or multi-client capacity, balancing competing priorities across organizations.
- A credible reputation, with the presence and standing to support Frive's profile with investors, partners, and regulators.
- Experience of Employment Law and its commercial impact.
Personal Attributes
- Understands and buys into Frive's philosophy of making healthy eating convenient, delicious, and accessible, whilst championing locally sourced and organic ingredients.
- Able to translate legal complexity into clear, commercially relevant advice for a non-legal executive audience.
- Able to contribute to the development of a mutually supportive and collaborative relationship with a wide range of stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, and shareholders.
- A strong relationship builder, both internally and externally, able to listen carefully and understand the different motivations of leaders and stakeholders.
- Comfortable offering support and challenge in equal measure; confident, credible, and calm in complex or sensitive situations.
- Energized by entrepreneurial, fast-moving businesses rather than purely administrative legal roles, and willing to be engaged and value-adding within a limited time commitment.
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Competencies & Style
- Commercially minded, with the ability to identify pragmatic solutions to legal risk rather than simply flagging problems.
- Acts as a role model both internally and externally, demonstrating sound judgment and integrity.
- Supportive but willing to be direct where risks are serious; advisory in style, with the confidence to push for action when issues become material.
- Practical, experienced, and credible with founders, executives, Board members, and external stakeholders.
Knowledge & Skills
- Strong working knowledge of UK commercial, corporate, employment, data protection, and consumer/food regulatory law.
- Excellent drafting and negotiation skills across a broad range of commercial agreements.
- Strong track record of shaping and supporting business, strategic, and financial decisions on a basis that takes due account of and mitigates legal risk.
- An understanding of the difference between providing good legal counsel and governance oversight, and the direct management of business issues.
What Success Looks Like
- A well-managed legal risk profile with clear visibility of key exposures and mitigations.
- A supported and better-informed executive team, able to move quickly on commercial opportunities.
- Robust governance and compliance foundations appropriate to Frive's stage of growth.
- Stronger external credibility with investors, partners, and regulators.
- A General Counsel relationship that adds meaningful value to the business, beyond routine contract review.
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