Top-tier lawyers. Acting as your external DPO.
A top-tier lawyer, curated one by one, who becomes your external DPO and collaborates with your team as an extension of it: close to the business, carrying the context, answering for the outcome the way your best in-house lawyer would. To the extent, and for as long as, you need it.
Not someone learning on the go. They have done it before.
Where a Fractional DPO sits
Modern legal teams are layered.
It makes sense when privacy is complex enough to need specialist, recurring expertise, and not so heavy that it justifies a full-time position of its own. That is the middle layer, and it is the one most teams are still missing.
Owns the company. Knows everything, has time for a fraction of it. Privacy sits on someone’s desk on top of their real work.
Covers what the team doesn’t master and can’t reach, collaborating with them as one of them. Close to the business, carrying the context from one quarter to the next.
Take the specialist and contentious work. They advise on privacy, then hand it back for you to run.
Niche, not generalist
Not a commercial lawyer catching up on privacy, but someone who has spent years in it and in your sector. Your matter is not their first time.
Only, and to the extent, you need it
As much or as little as your workload calls for. Ongoing, because privacy never stops, but never more than what your processing actually generates.
A business partner, not a supplier
Sits close to the business, carries the context from one quarter to the next and answers for the outcome. Continuity, ownership and judgment.
The middle layer is the same model whatever the specialism: contract negotiation, IP, IT, data protection. Fractional DPO is that model curated for privacy — a top-tier lawyer acting as your external DPO, collaborating with the team, only and when you need it.
The gap
The team isn’t over-resourced. It’s short-handed.
A leave. Someone relocated abroad. A promotion that leaves a gap behind. A team that changed shape this year. The privacy work carries on through all of it, and the available hands don’t.
Not a peak in the workload, a shortage of hands to meet it. The privacy function is the one that shows it first, because it is usually the part of the team with the least slack and the least cover.
The signals
Complex enough to need a specialist. Not heavy enough for a full-time one.
Most companies that end up with a Fractional DPO recognise several of these at once. One or two on their own rarely justify it. Five or six almost always do.
- You hold a lot of customer or employee data
- You ship digital products
- You use AI in the product or in operations
- You profile or segment people
- You depend on technology vendors and sub-processors
- You transfer data outside the EEA
- You operate in more than one country
- You sell to enterprise buyers who audit you
How teams get one
Four ways to get a DPO. Only one takes it on.
Your team knows everything and can’t reach it all. A law firm reaches it and never quite knows you. A subscription is independent and never quite arrives. The fourth combines what the first three each get half right.
Someone on your team
Knows the business better than any outsider will, which is the hard part to buy. What they don’t have is the specialist depth or the hours, and the DPO duties land on top of the work they were already doing.
A law firm
Reaches the expertise and gives you an answer. You still have to run the register, write the assessments, chase the vendors and land it. Usually a junior team does the work, the learning curve is billed to you, and they will try to sell you more.
A DPO subscription
Clears the formality at a low monthly price. The calibre of whoever ends up as your DPO is whatever it is, the hours are metered, and the person answering when something lands is whoever is on the rota that week.
Fractional DPO
A top-tier lawyer, curated for your sector, acting as your external DPO and working as an extension of the team. Knows your business from week one, has done it before, and answers for the outcome rather than handing you options.
A DPO who owns it
Not advice. A DPO who owns it.
A law firm gives you advice on privacy. You still have to decide it, document it, chase it and land it.
A Fractional DPO takes it off your desk and owns it.
They work to your priorities, not to a scope of work. They talk to the regulator, to the enterprise client’s auditor and to your own engineers without you in the room, and bring judgment to those conversations rather than options for you to weigh later. They don’t need briefing on the context: they bring it, and they keep it from one quarter to the next.
A business partner, not a supplier. Continuity, ownership and judgment, from an external DPO who works like one of your own.
- AssessmentsDPIAs on the projects that need one, before they ship rather than after
- New projectsAdvice on what is being built now, while the design can still change
- RightsAccess, erasure and portability requests, answered within the deadline and answered well
- ContractsDPAs, sub-processors and international transfer mechanisms
- BreachesThe 72-hour decision, taken by someone who has taken it before
- RecordsPolicies and the record of processing activities, kept current as the business moves
- TrainingInternal training that lands, for the teams who actually touch the data
- SalesThe privacy questionnaire currently holding up a large account
- RegulatorThe relationship with the supervisory authority, and whoever has to answer it
All of it leaves your team’s desk. And it is still gone next year.
Six situations
Six situations. One shape of answer.
No DPO at all, one on the way out, a team with no time, new ground to cover, a level of specialisation you have outgrown, or an appointment sitting with the wrong person. Pick yours and we’ll show you the lawyer it calls for and the shape of the engagement.
Which one is yours?
- The situation
- The lawyer
- Typical shape
- Why it fits
Real impact
Real impact. Not theory.
400+ independent lawyers, 20+ jurisdictions, from the firms whose name opens the meeting, and from the in-house roles they took afterwards.
Get a Fractional DPO. And your team’s week back.
Have the expertise you need as your external DPO, in the shape you decide. And someone who understands your business, carries the context and answers for the outcome.
Book a call →This page describes a service. It is not legal advice.