Ten functional areas overseen by general counsel or other executive

Last year’s ALM survey asked about 14 functional areas and whether the chief legal officer supervised it or some other executive did. Unsurprisingly, for more than two out of three respondents, the top lawyer was by a large margin responsible for Compliance, Corporate Secretary, Patents, and Trademarks. On the other hand, it was very unusual for two functions to report to the general counsel: Human Resources and Tax (although a handful did have that arrangement). Roughly on the order of one-out-of-three general counsel had reporting oversight of Corporate Security, Environment Health & Safety, or Risk Management.

The “ties,” where it was as likely for the office of the general counsel to hold reporting responsibility as for another executive, were Government Relations and Insured Claims Settlement. To learn more about the Law Department Metrics Benchmark Survey of ALM Legal Intelligence, click here for ALM’s website. http://www.almlegalintelligence.com/r5/showkiosk.asp?listing_id=3445502