Associate counsel and others interested in rising to become general counsel can make themselves attractive as candidates by gaining management experience, Deborah Ben-Canaan of Major, Lindsey & Africa told Legal Dive. 

To get that experience you can ask your general counsel to expand your role. However, don’t expect to go from managing no people to managing a team of 50.  

“But you could go from managing nobody to managing a team of two,” said Ben-Canaan, the 22-year veteran legal recruiter and Major, Lindsey & Africa partner. 

If you can’t get that first taste of management responsibility where you are, you’ll have to go elsewhere, but many general counsel are aware of the importance of giving their legal stars opportunities to grow as a retention strategy.  

“I do a lot of speaking with GCs on talent retention and that’s one way to keep good talent,” she said. “You keep growing them and pushing them out of their comfort zone by giving them new responsibilities.”

High hurdle

Public companies pose the highest hurdle for associate counsel and others who aspire to a general counsel role because board experience and knowledge of securities law are two of the criteria that are typically sought. But even with these companies, it’s not impossible to make the leap if the circumstances are right. 

One public company Ben-Canaan worked with hired someone who had never been in the top in-house legal job before, but she had experience as a divisional GC and at the same time had been corporate secretary for the parent company. That meant she had management experience and also knew her way around the board environment.

“So while she wasn’t in the top job at the company she was hired away from, she had the right skills to move into the GC role,” said Ben-Canaan, who works in Major, Lindsey & Africa’s In-House Counsel Recruiting practice.

The more likely pathway is when a company needs a counsel whose specialty area matches well with their legal priorities. 

“If you’re a regulatory attorney and the company that’s hiring is dealing with significant regulatory challenges, they may value that skill set above somebody who’s sitting in the GC role already,” she said.  “They may be ready to give you a chance.” 

Self-evaluation

Before you embark on a journey to the GC seat, make sure it’s really the kind of work you want to do. Because if your passion is for a certain area of law, like intellectual property, the GC seat might not be right for you. 

“Some people love being an IP specialist,” she said. “That’s what they want to do, and also they might want to manage a team of IP people.”

But if the GC path feels right, a good strategy is to get some management experience, even if it’s just managing one person, like a paralegal. And if you grow that over time, you can hand off more of your legal duties to those you manage. 

“You can absolutely be a specialist and be a manager,” she said. “I don’t think it necessarily spreads you too thin, because once you become a manager, some of the work you were doing is being done by other people.”

In addition to your legal and other hard skills, you’ll want to cultivate your soft skills, which in addition to management ability includes emotional intelligence and business savvy, Ben-Canaan said. 

Managing people can help build your emotional intelligence. Having a mentor can help, too. 

Companies also tend to look for someone with gravitas, although that’s not necessarily something you can cultivate. Nor is it something that can be defined. But executives are looking for someone whose knowledge and confidence is evident in the way they carry themselves.

For that reason, the more experience you have, the more your experience will be evident to others.

“We hear all the time that gravitas is important to the role,” Ben-Canaan said.