For the 2016 edition of GC Powerlist we return to the original format of the report – launched in 2013 – focusing on senior general counsel (GCs). Over that time, the report has expanded hugely to become one of the most important strands of Legalease’s portfolio. Expanding the report also reflects the reality that in understanding GCs, you need to look at the specifics. While law firms operate on a few variants of the same model, in-house teams are defined much more by the industry and the individual company in which they work.
But there are broad trends as well. The upward march of the in-house profession that this report was originally launched to chronicle has, if anything, accelerated. While law firms are struggling for growth in many sectors, in-house teams continue to expand in the UK and take on greater swathes of work. It’s becoming increasingly mainstream to encounter teams with multimillion-pound budgets that put only a tiny minority of their work to law firms. Where they are instructing outside counsel, a good proportion of GCs now barely bother to conceal their tactic of pushing law firms down the value chain… and their teams correspondingly upwards.
The most obvious force pushing the advance of GCs is much cited yet still hard to overstate: the growth of robust regulation across a range of industry sectors, a trend amplified by rising reputational risk. In discussions with dozens of GCs for this report, regulation and risk is cited time and again. What had looked as if it may have been the high tide of risk back in 2013 now is just business as normal. Once, the industry truism was that volatility was good for law firms – the last five years suggest that may now need revision – but it is certainly good for GCs.
More clout means more responsibility and more stress, though it is clear that in-house continues to do better on job satisfaction and engaging young lawyers than private practice. There is budget pressure, though it is deflected more than often claimed; ‘more for less’ is more often ‘more for more (and less for law firms)’ or at least ‘more for about the same’.
That said, that trend cannot last forever. New technology is providing tools to disrupt legal teams and the level of exposure, legal risk and cost facing companies suggests that GCs may have to deal with more of the kind of benchmarking law firms got used to years ago.
The in-house profession surely faces some deeper thinking about its ethical role and framework in the years ahead – it is unclear how long regulation can remain so far behind the reality that huge areas of civil law are now handled by employed lawyers, not law firms.
But whatever the challenges ahead, GCs deserve the credit they are at last getting. A band of impressive individuals have carved out roles of influence within corporate environments that, if not exactly hostile, were hardly making it easy for lawyers to progress. That journey looks set to continue.
The GC Powerlist 2016 was written by Sarah Downey and James Wood. Additional reporting by Tom Moore, Kathryn McCann and Jaishree Kalia.
For further analysis, see: GC Powerlist 2016