– Organizations
– The General Counsel Forum is an association of 700 general counsel and senior managing counsel.
– Founded in 1998 as the Dallas-Fort Worth General Counsels Management Practices Forum.
– Members include general counsel and managing counsel of corporations, non-profit organizations, and government agencies.
– Mission is to improve the professional lives of general counsel through peer-to-peer interaction and knowledge exchange.
– The Forum expanded nationally in 2009 and founded the Chicago Chapter in 2012.
– United States
– The General Counsel Forum was originally named DFWGCMPF.
– The association partners with in-house members and outside counsel known as underwriters.
– The Forum hired a CEO in 2005 to enhance efficiency and expand membership.
– In 2009, the organization expanded nationally and dropped the reference to Texas.
– The Forum founded the Chicago Chapter in 2012.
– United Kingdom
– The GC100 group was launched in the UK on 9 March 2005.
– It brings together the senior legal officers of over eighty-five FTSE 100 companies.
– The group was formed to address the increasing complexity of domestic and international law impacting UK listed companies.
– Practical Law Company serves as the secretariat for the GC100.
– Membership is by invitation only, and it focuses on sharing best practices in law, risk management, and compliance.
– See also
– Corporate lawyer
– Corporation counsel
– Enterprise legal management
– References
– The 2011 In-House Counsel Compensation Survey
– Profiles of In-House Counsel 2006
– General Counsel Can Take Home Millions
– General Counsel as Lawyer-Statesman
– The GC100 Group. Practical Law.
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (February 2016) |
A general counsel, also known as chief counsel or chief legal officer (CLO), is the chief in-house lawyer for a company or a governmental department.
In a company, the person holding the position typically reports directly to the CEO, and their duties involve overseeing and identifying the legal issues in all departments and their interrelation, including engineering, design, marketing, sales, distribution, credit, finance, human resources and production, as well as corporate governance and business policy. This would naturally require in most cases reporting directly to the owner or CEO overseeing the very business on which the CLO is expected to be familiar with and advise on the most confidential level. This requires the CLO/general counsel to work closely with each of the other officers, and their departments, to appropriately be aware and advise.
Historically, general counsel often handled administrative tasks while outside lawyers in private practice handled more complex legal work. Since the 1980s, however, the general counsel position has become increasingly prominent in multinational companies, often directly advising the board of directors in place of outside lawyers. General counsel are now often among the most highly paid executives of major American corporations, with many earning seven-figure or eight-figure compensation packages. Prominent American government lawyers and law firm partners are often hired for general counsel roles at prominent companies. Similar trends are also being seen in the United Kingdom and other countries.
General counsel often have broad roles encompassing crisis management, compliance reporting management and public policy advocacy. Many companies also hire in-house counsel to handle specialized tasks such as tax work, mergers and acquisitions, labor law and intellectual property, sometimes building in-house practice groups that rival the practices of major law firms.