Senior Legal & Business Consultant
Josh Smith
MA/LPC, BSc (Hons), GDL — Solicitor (England & Wales, Republic of Ireland) · Fractional General Counsel · NED & board advisor · UK & UAE
“Get the corporate, finance and commercial foundations right, and the deal — and the business behind it — holds up under pressure.”
What Josh does
Board-level legal judgement, on the deals and structures that decide the outcome.
Josh is an international business consultant, non-executive director and fractional general counsel with 10+ years across corporate, commercial and finance — in private practice and in-house, across common law and civil law systems in the UK and UAE.
- 01Corporate & M&A
- Share sales and purchases, due diligence, subscriptions and investments, shareholder agreements, completions and company secretarial work.
- 02Finance
- Convertible loan notes, derivatives and structured products, fund finance, leveraged finance, securitisation, commodities and energy, and regulatory change.
- 03Commercial contracts
- NDAs, engagement letters, supply and service agreements, management contracts, publishing and talent contracts — drafted, negotiated and playbooked.
- 04Fractional general counsel
- Board-level legal cover for founders, funds and growing groups that need senior judgement without a full-time hire.
When Josh gets the call
Deals, ownership and the infrastructure underneath a scaling business.
- 01An investment or acquisition needs running end to end.
- 02Founders need shareholder arrangements that hold.
- 03A business is scaling without any legal infrastructure.
- 04A board wants senior legal judgement in the room.
Cross-border work between the UK and the UAE is a particular strength, with lived experience and networks in both — as well as Spain.
Advising the profession
Josh also advises lawyers and legal businesses on where the profession is going.
Alongside client work, Josh advises solicitors, consultants, firms and legal businesses on strategy, positioning, platforms and models — the future of law as it is actually being built, not as it is being talked about.
Train, qualify, associate, partner — that ladder is no longer the whole map. In-house, consulting, fractional, ALSPs, platforms, boutiques, solo practice, portfolio careers, legal tech, AI and entrepreneurship are all live routes.
More options, less certainty. Josh helps lawyers work out which route is theirs.
What you are known for, who you serve, how you price, and what makes you the person a client calls first. Seniority is not the same as being a trusted adviser — Josh works on the commercial judgement and client relationships that close that gap.
Consultant models, platform firms, ALSPs and AI-enabled delivery are reshaping how legal services are bought and sold. Josh advises on which of these to build on, partner with, or ignore — and how to structure the business behind the practice.
For lawyers who want to build something of their own with brand, infrastructure, support and an ecosystem already behind them.
Read the full picture on New Legal Careers, or if you are a lawyer thinking about building something of your own, see New Legal Partnership.
Background
Silver circle trained. FTSE 100 and multinational in-house.
Josh advises New’s clients on legal strategy, structuring and partnerships, and on the contracts and documentation founders, creatives and consultants rely on — NDAs, terms and conditions, service agreements and shareholder agreements.
Josh is a partner at Arbor Law (senior corporate, finance and commercial lawyer and fractional GC, member of its Emerging Markets Group) and fractional Legal Director at Halliday Forfaiting Services in the UAE.
He also holds advisory roles including global advisor to The Family Business Community, and has been EMEA Director of The Law Tech Consultancy and a board advisor to FalconLion, the UK–UAE business community.
Group Legal Counsel at Yas Holding, a UAE-headquartered multinational investment company with 120+ group companies across nine sectors — handling corporate, finance and commercial contracts and cross-border transactions at holding-company level.
Before that, Legal Counsel in the Investments team at Schroders’ London HQ, covering funds, finance, derivatives, structured products and securitisation on international transactions.
Josh qualified at Travers Smith, a London silver circle firm, in its Corporate Finance department — M&A, corporate contracts, derivatives, fund finance, leveraged finance and securitisation.
He has since consulted on regulatory change and derivatives documentation for a leading investment bank via D2 Legal Technology and MUFG, worked as an analyst at Credit Suisse in contingent liabilities, and delivered corporate and finance consulting through Ignition Law, Arch Law and Ontra.
Josh was a school governor at Hendon School, sitting on its Finance and General Purposes Committee, and mentors both start-ups and junior lawyers.
His psychology dissertation was published in the Journal of Adolescence and presented at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, where it took second place. He is also a published songwriter and producer with 30 works to his name.
- Solicitor — England & Wales, and the Roll of Solicitors in the Republic of Ireland
- Legal Practice Course — Pass with Distinction
- Graduate Diploma in Law — Pass with Commendation, Gold Award Academic Scholarship
- BSc (Hons) Psychology, First Class — University of Warwick
See the work or meet the wider team.
What does your business need next?
No complicated brief required. Start with the problem.