Handle day-to-day legal tasks.
A general counsel should be able to run many of the day-to-day legal workflows that the business needs. What counts as "day to day" varies by type of company, but typically includes drafting common agreements (e.g. master service agreements, statements of work, employment or contractor agreements), handling recurring compliance and filing tasks, and being a first resource to answer legal questions as they pop up.
Having built, run, and sold small businesses from the operator's seat, I know this category of work well, and I've built Hapax around delivering it. Keeping this work with a lawyer who already knows your company saves time and money and gives you continuity, consistency, and fast turnaround.
Find the right specialists.
Inevitably, some legal needs will pop up that are not day-to-day. When that happens, a company (big or small) will need outside specialists to get the job done. Part of a general counsel's job is to identify the right outside counsel for a given need.
It might sound simple to find a lawyer or law firm when the need arises — after all, it's a recruiting task and executives recruit for roles all the time. But legal work spans a huge range of specialty areas, geographies and jurisdictions, and price points. A generalist executive (e.g. a CEO) rarely has a deep network of lawyers to source for such a wide range of needs — but I do. I maintain relationships with solo practitioners, boutique firms, and larger firms across practice areas and jurisdictions, so I can bring trusted, recommended counsel to the table when the need arises. And when a need is outside of my existing network, I can quickly identify and screen new options.
Manage outside counsel.
When your company needs outside counsel for a specialty matter, a good general counsel acts like a project manager for the duration of the need. That means your general counsel should take responsibility for ensuring outside counsel is focused on the right issues, is getting the right outcomes for the business — and is doing so in a cost-effective way.
A general counsel helps control outside legal spend by deciding what should be allocated to outside counsel (vs. handling in-house) and by managing scope creep (making sure the work does not expand beyond what your business actually needs based on the matter and level of risk). Outside legal spend is a controllable cost — but only if someone is managing it!
These three things are the core of the general counsel job description, and you can get the benefits with a full-time hire or a fractional general counsel. Ideally, you want a general counsel that understands the "business side" of the company deeply so that they can function as a trusted adviser for the long term.