SUMMER 2019 TODAY’S GENER AL COUNSEL
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GC’s Several Roles Require Disparate Skill Sets By Rees W. Morrison
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EOs expect their general counsel to devote the largest portion of their time to contributing as a senior executive of the company and thinking like a business person. In line with that role, usually in United States corporations, the general counsel reports directly to the CEO and serves on the company’s management committee. With respect to this predominant role of the general counsel, CEOs look for a blend of strategic thinking, deep knowledge of the company and industry, and insight into applicable legal risks and opportunities. Second in priority, CEOs expect the general counsel to anticipate and deal with legal issues, sort through and be able to explain them competently and quickly, and marshal the resources of the law department and the law firms it retains to resolve them. Thus, separate from being a senior executive of the company, general counsel are expected by CEOs to navigate the roiling waters of the legal environment. Third on the list of typical expectations, CEOs rely on their general counsel to manage legal spending and Rees W. Morrison is headcount efficiently. Law a principal of Altman departments often have Weil, Inc. He has more than 25 years of a relatively high percentage of well-compensated experience advising law departments on employees (aka lawyers), cost control, depart- so the internal legal budget ment structure, proconstantly undergoes scrucess improvement, tiny by Human Resources. outside counsel management, perfor- Business executives and mance benchmarking CFOs fret about outside and other key issues. spend: “Why do we rack He also specializes up such bills when we have in data analytics for inside lawyers?” Typically, legal organizations. a law department spends rwmorrison@ altmanweil.com about as much on external
counsel as it spends on its internal staff, so the general counsel is expected to steward shareholder money as it is spent internally and externally. Research such as the Chief Legal Officer Survey conducted annually by Altman Weil show that these three roles set the priorities of general counsel. Stated broadly, CEOs look to their general counsel to spend approximately half of their Business counselor, time as a senior executive legal eagle, and of the business, a third manager — three of their time addressing roles that each call legal questions and a fifth for different skills. of their time managing the legal resources of the company. This holds true regardless of department size. Of course, CEOs recognize that major events such as mergers, class actions, public relations crises or governmental investigations distort how the general counsel allocates time during those upheavals; but over a period of months, this general allocation is likely to hold. Business counselor, legal eagle, and manager — three roles that each call for different skills. General counsel who embrace this distribution of their time to meet the expectations of their boss make use of various tools and methodologies. As a key officer of the company, general counsel use calendaring software, multiple tools of communication and news aggregators among other tools, and a department tuned to client structure and needs. As the top lawyer, general counsel read voraciously (including blogs and magazines), create templates for status reports, research legal databases, and talk frequently with partners at law firms. As departmental managers, they lean on matter management databases, legal ops experts, alternative service providers, data analytic insights, tips from trade groups and the better practices of other law departments that strengthen their own.