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July 10, 2009
Once more with feeling: The GC as Wartime Consigliere.
General Counsel at corporations do make a difference. Companies might as well demand the right package.
She should be broad-gauged, intellectual, take-charge, organized, preventive, resourceful—and warlike at heart. Hates war as expensive—but likes and even revels in a fight. Tells management what to do—and not a tentative, qualified "what you can do."
It's not a Godfather thing, not a macho thing, not a litigation thing. But it's a no-brainer. In late May, over at his well-regarded Law Department Management, Rees Morrison, one of the smarter, sager and more experienced lawyer-consultants out there, had asked "Does a General Counsel Make All That Much Difference?"
Our two cents is still the same for a working formula for "the right GC." And it's still a no-brainer: Get thee a philosopher-warrior. Be safe and feel safe, friends.
The Wrong Stuff: Thomas "Tom" Feargal Hagen (Paramount Pictures)
And Morrison had gone a bit farther, inspired in part by May's Atlantic piece "Do CEOs Matter?, by Harris Collingwood. A Morrison excerpt:
Other researchers have found that CEO leadership matters relatively less in constrained industries, such as electrical utility industries, than in hotly competitive, fast-changing industries. A similar conclusion probably applies to general counsel: legal/business calls are tougher and more frequent in roiling industries so the top lawyer has more opportunity to make a difference.
(Emphasis added.) Do we ever agree--as did the wonderfully warlike trial lawyer Scott Greenfield, when he picked up on our original post back on June 1 singing the virtues of the "tough-guy" inside counsel--that "GC warriors" are worth their weight in gold bow-ties and silver spats.
A Villain Who Gets It: Virgil 'The Turk' Sollozo. "I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman. Blood is a big expense." (Paramount Pictures)
As Morrison suggests, it's just a business fact--especially in changing industries--that General Counsel do make a difference. So your corporate client might as well demand the "right" package:
A. She should be broad-gauged, intellectual, scholarly, take-charge, organized, preventive, resourceful--and warlike at heart.
B. Hates war as expensive ("blood" one Godfather character noted, "is a big expense")--but likes, and even revels in, a fight.
C. Tells management what to do--and not a tentative, qualified "what you can do."
Note: See also our May 15 post, "Proctor & Gamble's Lafley: Look to the Meaningful Outside", on the must-read thoughts of A.G. Lafley, P&G's outgoing CEO, about CEO uniqueness in May's Harvard Business Review. In many respects, you can adapt Lafley's notion--i.e., the most effective top inside lawyers should "look to the outside"--to law departments at great companies.
The Right Stuff: Rees Morrison
(From a June 1, 2009 JDH post)
Posted by Rob Bodine at July 10, 2009 11:35 PM