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After 27 years as an in-house lawyer at The Procter & Gamble Co., Steven Jemison is finally making it to the top. On June 1 he was slated to become chief legal officer of the Cincinnati-based consumer products giant. But Jemison will have to share his moment in the spotlight. P&G is also bringing on one of the top lawyers in the Bush administration as its new general counsel -- Deborah Platt Majoras, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission.

And the odds look good that Majoras, 44, will replace Jemison, 57, when he retires as CLO. According to Daniel Kotchen, who was a staff attorney at the FTC prior to Majoras's tenure, "Certainly she would join the company with the objective of the top spot." Kotchen adds, "She comes from a high-profile position, and P&G is a high-profile company with interesting and thorny issues." Kotchen, who is now a partner at Kotchen & Low in Washington, D.C., co-writes the Consumer Goods & Retail Industry Litigation Blog.

Jemison has a history with government agencies himself. After graduating from law school, he first worked for a year at the Federal Communications Commission, and then for five years at the National Labor Relations Board. He joined P&G's law department in 1981 and helped create its first-ever labor and employment group. Jemison says that the company decided to hire him and another in-house labor lawyer after it lost several employment cases.

The first high point in Jemison's career came in 1994, when a labor issue became P&G's chief concern. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor, examined the company's equal opportunity policies in a "glass ceiling audit." Jemison oversaw the investigation on P&G's end, which he says required the participation of all of its more than 50,000 employees.

In 2003 Jemison moved overseas when he became general counsel of P&G's unit for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The post satisfied his wanderlust. He lived in the Old Town section of Geneva and traveled frequently-attending a training session at a ski resort in Lebanon, for example. "It awakens your understanding of the world," Jemison says.

P&G called Jemison back to Cincinnati in 2005 to become corporate secretary and deputy general counsel. In February the company announced that Jemison would replace retiring chief legal officer James Johnson. Jemison still marvels at his career trajectory: "I'm just a kid from Chicago [who] did good."

Jemison says that his eventual successor is still undetermined. But with Majoras, P&G nabbed one of the most prized legal recruits of the Bush administration. After a decade at Jones Day and a short stint at the U.S. Department of Justice, she became chair of the FTC in 2004. She oversaw high-profile investigations into the link between childhood obesity and the marketing of snack foods. She also drew heavy criticism after the FTC ruled that oil companies didn't engage in price gouging after Hurricane Katrina. Majoras declined to comment through an FTC spokeswoman.

Majoras was slated to start at P&G on June 1 and will be primarily responsible for litigation and global antitrust matters. And while she might yet move up at P&G, former FTC staffer Kotchen doubts that it's a done deal. "I would be shocked if she were guaranteed [the top slot]," Kotchen says. "She would still have to go there and perform."

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