Many companies and lawyers use the term general counsel and chief legal officer interchangeably.  They draw little if any distinction between the two.

Google’s recent decision to split these functions into two separate senior legal positions highlights the growing role law plays in strategic business planning.  Their move is reminiscent of the creation of the chief financial officer position. 

Before the 1960’s the title of chief financial officer was virtually unheard of.  Up until then the controller was the all purpose bean counter who did the heavy lifting for all finance and accounting issues. Today, chief financial officers are everywhere.

Separating the general counsel function from the chief legal officer function makes a lot of sense.  Dealing with strategic business legal issues requires time for reflection and planning.  It’s tough to reflect when the day-to-day lawyering requires you to react and put out fires.

The Wired GC nailed it when he wrote “Legal is bigger than the law.”  It’s about time more businesses noticed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 9th, 2006 at 9:34 pm and is filed under Business Blind Spots, Corporate Governance, Lawyers, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.