Leading the law department: hire the best

Leading the law department: hire the best

Valuing human resources

Ben Heineman was GE’s senior vice president-general counsel from 1987-2003 and then GE’s senior vice president for law and public affairs from 2004 until his retirement at the end of 2005. In this exclusive excerpt from his new book, The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension (Ankerwycke, April, 2016), he distils his own philosophy for transformational hiring and getting the most from your personnel.

For the inside counsel revolution to succeed, the General Counsel must follow a basic dictum: Hire the best. The key to the legal function’s credibility with the CEO and senior line executives is to seek broad-gauge lawyers who are outstanding technical experts, wise counselors and effective leaders to occupy the top specialist jobs in the company and to be general counsel in the main operating divisions. Placing the best people in senior lawyer positions across the company also has great ripple effects, as these individuals, in turn, build their specialty or business legal groups through other outstanding hires.

Your limit of 1 article in 30 days is up. Please login for full access or subscribe. Corporate users - click here for simple access (no password needed). For more information, please contact jasmine.glass@legalbusiness.co.uk