The different in-house roles: General counsel or head of legal

The general counsel (GC) or head of legal role is a major career milestone and a possible stepping stone to other senior legal roles or wider general management. When you are new to the role, your in-tray will be brimming with legal and management matters. However, as it's a leadership role, you will need to focus on the strategic aspects. Set aside time to think about your approach and make a plan that covers all the main priorities.

As head of legal, you may also be the GC or report to the GC, if their role extends beyond the legal function. Having reached this milestone, you now have a role with strategic and operational delivery dimensions, which means getting to grips with a diverse set of issues. For further information, see Checklist, Legal strategy: setting the strategic direction for your in-house legal team.

Legal teams provide wide-ranging services for different parts of their organisations. Sometimes legal input is an essential factor in the business process or an inevitable by-product of doing business in a given sector. However, don't assume every activity is a priority or needs to be carried out as it is currently. A legal audit of the organisation will reveal where your resources are most needed, where they're currently deployed and any gaps or overlaps. This will help you to build a map of legal need and activity across the business and to prioritise your resources. For further information, see Standard document, Internal due diligence questionnaire for the incoming General Counsel.

Having identified what the legal team is doing, ensure your resources are supporting the organisation's key objectives and strategy. Work with your senior business colleagues to align your team's objectives with those of the organisation (for further information, see Practice note, Legal operations: aligning legal and business strategy). If you have identified skills gaps, you'll need to recruit, bring in external resource or train your own lawyers. You could also work with business units to increase their legal self-reliance.

Whatever your structure and strategy, make sure your business colleagues get the service they need (in terms of service delivery and human interaction, as much as technical accuracy). Measure your team's activity so that you can demonstrate it is targeting the issues that matter the most, such as the greatest legal risks and the highest overall business priorities.

There are many performance management models, with differing levels of complexity. Pick one that helps you identify your purpose, scope, strategy and measures. Performance management also relates to individuals, so implement a system that covers objective setting, targets, skills, career development, appraisals and salary review. Also find ways to measure and reward contribution and to create development opportunities through performing different roles and supporting different parts of the business. This is particularly important in flat management structures, which are common in legal teams.

For further information, see Practice note, Legal operations: internal performance management.

As part of your performance management plan, you will need to demonstrate your team's areas of activities, its key performance indicators (KPIs) and where it's improving and excelling. You could use your organisation's systems and dashboards for this or, if they are inappropriate, find measures that illustrate the contribution your team makes. Remember that you need to get people to buy-in to what you want to be measured on but their reasons for doing so may be different to your own. This is fine and even desirable, because they will care more about the results if there are reasons why they matter to them. However, it is important to ensure that you share a view on what movements in the measures mean, in terms of direction and scale of change, likely reasons for the change and normal responses to that change.

For further information, see Practice note, Key performance indicators (KPIs): an overview.

The legal team is not just a cost centre. It can make a valuable contribution to the business and culture of the organisation and have an impact on the bottom line. Good performance metrics will help show this, but you may need to reinforce the message in other ways. Integrate your team into the organisation's reports and meetings cycles, and ensure it is involved in the planning stages of business initiatives and projects, and not just when problems arise.

You'll want to avoid surprises and have funds available to meet unplanned or unexpected legal activity, or have a way to tap into wider corporate contingency or project funds. If the business units have legal budgets, involve yourself in their business planning. If you are the sole custodian of your organisation's legal budget, work with your key business colleagues and external advisers to ensure that you have covered all planned activity and risks, and have a contingency for the unexpected.

For further information, see Practice note, Setting your legal supply chain up for success.

The Centre for Legal Leadership provides education, coaching, mentoring and related career support services for in-house leaders to get the best performance from themselves and their teams.