Here is a question designed to ruin your afternoon.
If you were fired tonight, what would your replacement stop doing tomorrow?
In 1985, Intel was losing the memory chip business that had built the company.
Andy Grove and Gordon Moore spent months looking for a clever way to save it.
Then Grove asked:
“If the board replaced us, what would the new CEO do?”
Moore replied:
“Get us out of memory chips.”
Grove looked at him and said:
“Then why don’t we walk out, come back in and do it ourselves?”
Painful.
Also, one of the decisions that turned Intel towards microprocessors.
The imaginary new CEO had one advantage.
No loyalty to sunk costs.
No need to defend yesterday’s strategy.
No emotional attachment to the sentence:
“But this is how we have always done it.”
Legal teams need that imaginary replacement too.
Would they keep your best lawyer coordinating six local firms?
Would they use a global firm for every moving part?
Would they create permanent headcount for pressure that may disappear in six months?
Would they let inherited processes consume the team’s best hours?
Probably uncomfortable.
That is the point.
At Ambar, a Fractional Counsel can take ownership of a defined transaction, investigation, transformation or new market workstream while the GC redesigns the function around the work that should genuinely stay inside.
The business keeps moving.
The A team returns to the decisions that build influence.
And nobody has to wait to be fired before acting like the new management.
This may not feel good today.
Tomorrow is the point.
Before you go: how Ambar can help
We help GCs access senior independent legal talent when their teams need more range, more speed or more specialist judgment.
1) Fractional counsel for capacity gaps
When a key lawyer moves role, goes on leave, or gets pulled into a strategic project, we help cover the gap without adding permanent structure.
2) Specialist expertise for new areas
Privacy, AI, technology contracts, payments, cybersecurity, energy, regulatory or new jurisdictions — senior lawyers who bring knowledge into the team, not just hours.
3) The layer between in-house and traditional firms
For work that is too senior for junior execution, too close to the business for a law firm machine, and too temporary for a permanent hire.
4) Legal AI that learns your standard
We help legal teams turn senior judgment into playbooks, model answers, red flags, evals and error-analysis frameworks for the AI tools their teams already use.
Not generic AI. Your legal standard.
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Stay cool,
Dr. No