US general counsel often see their strategic value under-appeciated by boards because they tend to associate the GC function with governance assurance, litigation and legal oversight, according to research from US legal recruitment firm BarkerGilmore.
The study – The GC-Board Alignment Gap – showed that the top three areas where boards believe GCs are currently delivering most value are board governance and committee support (76%), litigation and dispute strategy (65%) and M&A transactions (47%). By contrast, while GCs recognised board governance and committee support as the top area where value should be delivered (65%), they also selected corporate strategy formulation (63%) and enterprise risk, integrated with business planning (56%) as their top three.
BarkerGilmore says this reveals a “perception gap” between where GCs think their role is delivering value and what boards are actually seeing from their legal departments: only 35% of board respondents selected corporate strategy formulation as an area where GCs are delivering value, while 41% selected enterprise risk combined with business planning.
BarkerGilmore said: “Strategic general counsel value is often embedded upstream in management deliberations rather than surfaced explicitly at the board table. Boards reasonably assume that strategy presented by the CEO reflects integrated input from the full leadership team, including the general counsel. As a result, strategic legal influence may be under-recognised not because it is absent, but because it is indirect and insufficiently visible within formal boardroom interactions.”
GC time constraints are also impacting their strategic impact, the data suggests. While 47% of boards rank corporate strategy and transactions as an extremely important use of GC time, GCs believe they are not spending enough time on it (20% of their time currently, compared to their ideal goal of 24%). By contrast, GCs think they are spending too much time on legal ops matters (23% currently, which they want to reduce to 19%). BarkerGilmore believes this highlights a capacity issue rather than a priority issue.
In addition, the survey data shows that most GC-board interactions are episodic rather than at regular intervals, with 54% of GCs saying direct meetings with the board only happen occasionally outside of formal sessions.
BarkerGilmore said: “Strategic influence depends less on availability and more on intentional visibility, role clarity and disciplined interaction design.”
The survey was based on 157 responses from GCs and 34 responses from board members across a range of organisations in the US.
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