How to Hire a General Counsel
A General Counsel is hired to be the firm’s lawyer, the firm’s judgment, and the firm’s adult in the room all at once. AmLaw partner credentials prove the candidate practiced law at the highest level. They do not always prove the candidate can run a legal function inside the business or sit at the executive table when the call is commercial rather than purely legal.
Legal, commercial, operational.
In commercial real estate, a General Counsel handles transactional volume across acquisitions and dispositions, fund formation, debt and equity documentation, regulatory and tax structuring, and litigation when it arises. In professional services and growth-oriented operating companies, the work shifts toward commercial contracts, employment, IP, regulatory, and corporate transactions — with the same demand for executive judgment.
In any of those contexts, the General Counsel runs an outside counsel relationship, builds an in-house team, manages legal spend against the work, and sits at the leadership table when the question is not really a legal one. Defining the actual mix of those responsibilities at your firm is the first work of any GC search.
AmLaw credentials do not equal in-house judgment.
The mistake firms make most often is hiring on outside-counsel pedigree alone. A partner from an AmLaw 50 firm has practiced law at scale and run a book of business. They have rarely had to run a legal function as a cost center, build a small team from scratch, or accept the in-house tradeoff that says the right answer at 80% confidence on Tuesday is more valuable than the perfect answer at 100% confidence on Friday.
- Resources
What the GC has been leaning on.
A GC at a large firm typically has deputies across transactions, litigation, and regulatory. The same candidate inside a leaner firm, where the GC is the whole legal function plus outside counsel manager plus board secretary, is doing a different job.
- Culture
How the GC is expected to weigh in.
Some founders want a GC who will say no on principle. Others want a GC who finds a way to get the deal done. Most want some calibrated mix. Misalignment between expected posture and actual style is where the relationship usually breaks.
- Future
The next event the firm is heading into.
A capital raise, a recapitalization, an acquisition, an IPO, an enforcement matter, a market expansion. The right GC is built for the next event. Hiring for steady-state legal hygiene misses the work the role is being added to handle.
Where GC hires fail.
Outside-counsel-only pedigree. Strong AmLaw lawyer; new in-house executive. The firm is paying for the learning curve on running a function, managing spend, and operating against commercial timelines.
Industry mismatch. A GC built inside a fund or a CRE platform is not interchangeable with one from a professional services firm or a growth-oriented operating company. Regulatory regimes and deal structures differ.
Litigator hired for transactional work, or vice versa. GC roles weight differently. Hiring a candidate whose core training is in one mode for a seat dominated by the other ends in either friction or expensive outside counsel coverage.
No business judgment muscle. Some excellent lawyers cannot answer the question “what would you do if this were your business?” The candidates who can are the ones the CEO actually wants in the room.
Reference for judgment, not just credentials.
The strongest in-house General Counsel candidates are usually two or three moves into their in-house career, sitting in a seat with deferred equity and a board they have established trust with. They are not on the market in any conventional sense.
Our process maps the market against the specifics of the seat — industry, scope, in-house team size, posture, next event. We approach passive candidates directly and reference for executive judgment alongside legal craft. Detail on the engagement structure lives on How We Engage.
GC searches across all three of our verticals.
24 Hour Search runs General Counsel searches across Commercial Real Estate, Professional Services, and Growth-Oriented Owners & Operators. Adjacent role pages: CFO, COO, and CHRO.
Start with the outcome,
not the title.
Tell us what the role needs to do for the business. We will reply personally to begin the conversation.
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