81,836
edits
General counsel: Difference between revisions
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{a|people|[[File:General Counsel.jpg|thumb|450px|center|Do you like movies with gladiators?]]}} | {{a|people|[[File:General Counsel.jpg|thumb|450px|center|Do you like movies with gladiators?]]}}A handsome, silvered fifty-five year-old midwesterner with the bearing, and legal acumen, of a 747 pilot. If you encounter him in the lift he won’t have a clue who you are, even though you have worked in his department since 1998. | ||
A handsome, silvered fifty-five year-old midwesterner with the bearing, and legal acumen, of a 747 pilot. If you encounter him in the lift he won’t have a clue who you are, even though you have worked in his department since 1998. | |||
[[General counsel]] are so named because they have distilled all the manifold devilish details of legal practice which haunt and propel their junior colleagues down to the single general principle by which the [[common law]] is organised: ''[[precedent]]''. Their first, and most likely last reaction to any conundrum they face will be to ask: “What have we done when this sort of thing has come up before?” | [[General counsel]] are so named because they have distilled all the manifold devilish details of legal practice which haunt and propel their junior colleagues down to the single general principle by which the [[common law]] is organised: ''[[precedent]]''. Their first, and most likely last reaction to any conundrum they face will be to ask: “What have we done when this sort of thing has come up before?” | ||
| Line 14: | Line 13: | ||
The [[general counsel]] will talk a great game, but will hand practical management of the “90 minutes” to her ball-breaker of a [[COO]], a [[management consultant]] without the first clue about the law, let alone what a modern [[legal department]] actually does, who in turn will saddle jobbing lawyers with the hard-yards of thinking up something meaningful way of filling out the boxes in his [[PowerPoint]] [[deck]]. Jobbing lawyers who, you’d think, would be better spending their time managing risk, rather than inspecting their navels looking for it. | The [[general counsel]] will talk a great game, but will hand practical management of the “90 minutes” to her ball-breaker of a [[COO]], a [[management consultant]] without the first clue about the law, let alone what a modern [[legal department]] actually does, who in turn will saddle jobbing lawyers with the hard-yards of thinking up something meaningful way of filling out the boxes in his [[PowerPoint]] [[deck]]. Jobbing lawyers who, you’d think, would be better spending their time managing risk, rather than inspecting their navels looking for it. | ||
===How to become general counsel of a bulge bracket [[investment bank]]=== | |||
Not easy, if you are not to the manor born. | |||
It will help if you have clerked for the Honourable Orville W. Baldeagleburger of the United States Court of Appeals for the Nineteenth Circuit, having graduated ''magna cum laude'' and Omicron Delta Kappa from Gomorrah College, U Idaho — but even all that will be for nought if you haven’t been senior partner at the particular [[white-shoe law firm]] which has, for twenty years, held the [[legal department]] you intend to preside over under its spell. | |||
The [[JC]] did a little research: of the GCs of the bulge bracket investment banks, not one GC in the last twenty years or so has not been a partner of a whiteshoe firm. Your best bets: Davis Polk, [[Sullivan and Cromwell|Sullivan & Cromwell]], and WillmerHale. | |||
===Trivia=== | ===Trivia=== | ||
The [[collective noun]] for a group of [[general counsel]] is an “[[adoration]]”. | The [[collective noun]] for a group of [[general counsel]] is an “[[adoration]]”. | ||