TheCorporateCounsel.net

Barker-Gilmore recently released its 2024 Aspiring General Counsel Report. Among other things, the report notes that if you want to be a GC, it sure helps to be anointed as a potential successor by your company’s management. According to the report, management-identified successors receive professional development in the form of expanded responsibilities, increased board exposure, leadership training and “stretch” assignments at higher rates than their peers generally. Here are some of the report’s other findings:

– 42% of Managing Counsel and 11% of Senior Counsel report being identified by management as potential successors to the sitting General Counsel.

– Being identified as a potential successor is more likely to keep Senior Counsel (60%) from pursuing other opportunities than it is for Managing Counsel (42%).

– In-house counsel that have received executive coaching (35%) are more likely to be identified as a successor than their counterparts without executive coaching (26%).

– Most identified successors are currently Deputy General Counsel (58%)

– 23% of potential successors identify as a race or ethnicity other than “white.”

The report also found that women are slightly more likely to be identified as a successor than men (53% vs. 47%), and that women are most likely to have been identified as a potential successor in the consumer (75%), industrial/manufacturing (60%) and financial services (56%) industries.

– John Jenkins