GENERAL COUNSEL REPORT:Room to grow?

In our Room to Grow General Counsel report we thought we would look, by way of  contrast, at one of the biggest management challenges facing GCs who have been successful in those things: how to engage, motivate and manage top talent.

General Counsel talent management

We surveyed 100 GCs and other senior lawyers managing in-house legal teams in leading companies to find out which aspects of talent management they find most problematic and to talk about some of their talent management techniques. That survey forms the basis of this report, along with the results of a follow-up survey in which we sought the views of more junior lawyers within in-house teams. Although our survey showed that many legal departments are making more use of non-lawyers – including some people who are skilled professionals – we have focused in this report on the management of legal talent.

General Counsel case studies 

As well as discussing the key issues highlighted by our surveys, our report includes case studies. Five senior in-house lawyers:  Max Hübner, Pavel Klimov, Ian Leedham, Tiago dos Santos Matias and Jos Sclater have talked to us in depth about different aspects of talent management. We are very grateful to them. We are particularly grateful to Joanne McKay, our Head of Client Services, for her invaluable contribution and the different perspective that she brought to this important debate. We also thank those who completed our survey and the other GCs with whom we discussed our preliminary findings, and the more junior in-house lawyers who participated in our follow-up survey.

General Counsel talent management development plan

The report ends with a template for a talent management development plan to help GCs hone their approach to talent management and avoid some of the common pitfalls identified by our survey.

We hope you find this report interesting and useful, you can download it below. We would be delighted to hear any comments you may have about it.