ACC Looks into the Future of General Counsel
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If the general counsel of the future could communicate with the general counsel of the present, what would they have to say about their jobs? Would they report that they are now handling billing at light speed? Taking a jetpack to the next board meeting? Replacing all of their outside counsel with hyper-intelligent robots? It’s hard to predict the future, but there are certainly ways to chart where the legal industry might be headed—and what that means for general counsel.
The Association of Corporate Counsel, a global bar association that represents more than 33,000 in-house attorneys, in partnership with the Georgetown University Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, has looked into the crystal ball to figure out what the general counsel of the future might need to think most about. The result is a report titled “Skills for the 21st Century General Counsel,” which looks at the ways the job has changed over time and offers insight into where it might be going.
The report predicts that as the legal industry evolves, general counsel will be called on to move beyond their legal skill set and demonstrate increased business savvy and ability to think strategically for the benefit of the broader organization.
Amar Sarwal, vice president and chief legal strategist at ACC, told CorpCounsel.com that in the modern legal department, just because an attorney is adept at the technical aspects of lawyering does not mean that he or she will be a superlative general counsel. “Being a great lawyer doesn’t make you rare,” he said, adding that being a great lawyer is an essential part of the GC package, but it’s not enough by itself.
Read original articleTags: Association of Corporate Counsel, Georgetown University Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, legal industry
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