Trust, transparency and truth are three key elements to a functional relationship between a Board and its Chief Legal Officer (CLO)/General Counsel (GC).  For nearly 28 years prior to my role of building highly effective legal teams for our clients at Major, Lindsey & Africa, I served for many years as a GC of both public and private organizations. Through this time, I have experienced the rapidly changing nature and function of this relationship.  The role of the GC continues to expand to meet client demands, and the qualifications and skills required for success in the role grow more complex.  However, the fundamental elements in this relationship remain.

Perhaps counterintuitively, trust is truly built on the GC’s foundational understanding of the organization’s strategic, commercial/operational and financial matters and how the Board functions to fulfill its obligations to shareholders and oversee executive management. With a keen and in-depth understanding of and involvement in the company’s strategic, commercial/operational and financial challenges, a GC will find it easier to build trust with a Board and successfully fulfil her duties and obligations in her role as legal leader.  A legal leader must understand the complex and often nuanced intersection of these key corporate issues and her specific expertise as GC in areas, for example, like legal compliance, corporate and Board governance, enterprise risk management, shareholder matters, as well as issues requiring increasingly greater oversight from the GC that include environmental, social and governance matters.  A Board trusts a strategic GC.