We asked legal leaders what actually carried them through the move into the top legal seat. Nearly half pointed to a single relationship. And when we asked what they report upstairs, more of them report nothing at all than report whether legal helped the business grow.
A survey of more than 150 US legal professionals, paired with interviews with sitting and former GCs and CLOs, on the transition into the general counsel role: who to know, where work should live, and what the board actually hears from you.
97% of GCs reported higher work volume over the past year, with more than 20 separate drivers behind it. 87% say the rate of risk and demand is still climbing.
70% of chief legal officers now run at least two functions beyond legal. 58% are deep in M&A and other corporate transactions.
$162K wasted per year by the average legal department on outside counsel work that runs past its expected scope. Only 20% of matters sent to firms stay inside budget.
Every GC we spoke to could handle the legal work. What tripped them up was the part of the job nobody trains you for: whose trust you need, what you send upstairs, and who actually does the work.
Asked which executive relationship mattered most to their early success as GC, 49% of legal leaders named the CEO. The CFO drew 14%. The board drew 11%. Nobody else cleared 5%.
CEOs tend to treat their GC as a strategic partner once trust exists. Where that trust never forms, the advisory seat gets filled by someone else, and taking it back is harder than claiming it early.
Litigation outcomes lead the reporting stack at 56%, followed by external spend against budget at 40% and contract cycle time at 35%. Every one of those looks backward. Business-enablement metrics finish last, behind the quarter of departments reporting nothing on any regular basis.
When the only number that reaches the C-suite is a cost number, legal reads as a line item to be managed. Legal is telling the story of legal risk, and paying for it at budget time.
39% have shifted work away from traditional firms over the past two years. 46% plan to over the next two. When stated intent runs ahead of past behavior, a practice has usually cleared the experimental stage. The barriers named most often are internal resistance to change, discomfort with untested providers, procurement, and legacy technology. None of those are structural.
The wider market agrees. Only 37% of legal departments expect to raise outside counsel spend this year, down from 58%. Companies engaging flexible legal talent instead rose 36% year over year, and 9 in 10 of those engagements are remote.
What sitting and former GCs said about the first year:
“So many of us think of ourselves as partners to the business, or we run our functions in silos. But when you get to the top legal seat, you are actually a business leader.” – Delida Costin, four-time GC/CLO
“If you don’t have their trust, your excellent legal advice is going to go ignored.” – Heather Stevenson, General Counsel, Red Cell Partners
“You have to stop waiting to be thanked, and start measuring your impact by the problems that you prevent.” – Lisa Gorman, former CLO, Eventbrite
Five sections of working material for new and newly appointed GCs.
Find out more about the New GC Toolkit eBook here.
Paragon Legal drew on conversations with legal leaders across industries, including general counsel, chief legal officers, deputy and associate general counsel, senior in-house lawyers, legal operations professionals, and outside advisors. Those conversations are supplemented with survey data from more than 150 legal professionals and benchmark research from ACC, Thomson Reuters, Gartner, and CLOC.
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