Managing Legal Operations

𝗔 𝗖𝗘𝗢 𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗚𝗖 𝘄𝗮𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. 𝗜 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲. 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. I see this pattern regularly in PE-backed and growth-stage companies. They run a search, find a strong candidate, make the hire. Then the new GC arrives on day one to find no paralegal support, no contract management system, no organized outside counsel relationships, and a budget that assumes legal will cost roughly what it cost when the CFO was managing it on the side. The GC spends the first six months doing work that should sit below their pay grade while simultaneously trying to build credibility as a strategic advisor. That tension burns through goodwill fast, and it's entirely preventable. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗺 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝗚𝗖 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗼𝗻𝗲: • One support hire. A paralegal or legal operations coordinator who can handle routine contracts, NDA flow, entity maintenance, and document management. This single hire frees the GC to focus on the work that justifies their compensation. • An outside counsel framework. Before the GC starts, identify two or three firms for the company's primary legal needs and establish rate agreements. The GC should inherit working relationships from the start. • A realistic budget. Legal spend will increase. If the company's been spending $500K annually on outside counsel with no in-house function, the first-year budget with a GC, support staff, and continued outside counsel needs should be modeled honestly. Surprising the GC with budget constraints after they start creates friction that damages the relationship early. • A clear mandate from the CEO. The GC needs to know in writing what the company expects them to prioritize in the first 90 days, whether that's integration work, compliance gaps, commercial contract standardization, or litigation oversight. This should come from the CEO directly, not delegated to HR or outgoing outside counsel. Without that clarity, the GC is guessing, and the leadership team is evaluating them against expectations that were never communicated. Companies that invest in this infrastructure before the GC starts tend to see faster impact and higher retention. The ones that skip it often find themselves back in a search within a couple of years. #GeneralCounsel #ExecutiveSearch #PrivateEquity

If you’re hiring your first General Counsel, the profile you choose matters more than most people realize. I often see companies default to a familiar path: • A senior associate at a Big Law firm • A junior partner willing to take a pay cut to go in-house And yes, sometimes that works. But here’s the risk. What that lawyer does every day in a firm is fundamentally different from what your first GC needs to do inside a business. The biggest gap I see isn’t legal judgment. Its operations. Your first GC isn’t just practicing law. They’re: • Building the legal function from scratch • Designing processes and workflows • Implementing legal tech, what’s needed Day 1 versus Day 90 versus Year 2 • Establishing outside counsel relationships • Creating and managing a legal budget • Counseling the business in real time, not billing by the hour When that experience is missing, organizations feel it fast through operational drag, inefficiency, and expensive clean-up later. My recommendation is simple. Hire someone who’s already done it. A seasoned in-house operator who has: • Built and scaled a legal department • Made smart tech and process decisions before • Operated as a true business partner • Has seen common issues early and knows how to diagnose them That’s how teams get built right the first time and avoid handing the next GC a mess to untangle before they can even start building. When it’s your first GC hire, experience isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between momentum and years of catch-up.

Here’s a take that still makes people uncomfortable: If your General Counsel is not positioned as part of the company’s leadership hierarchy, you do not actually understand the role. A GC is not a service function. Not a back office cost center. Not “legal support.” A real GC sits at the intersection of risk, strategy, governance, and decision making. That means hierarchy matters. When the GC is buried layers down the org chart, a few predictable things happen: Legal learns about decisions after they are effectively made. Risk is identified too late to be shaped. Problems get escalated instead of prevented. And the GC becomes reactive instead of influential. Companies then complain that “legal slows us down,” when in reality legal was never empowered to help speed things up. The strongest organizations I have seen get this right: The GC has direct access to the CEO. The GC is in the room when strategy is discussed, not just executed. The GC is expected to have opinions about the business, not just the law. And when the GC speaks, it carries weight. This is not about ego or status. It is about effectiveness. If the GC’s job is to help the company navigate risk while moving forward, they cannot do that from the sidelines. Hierarchy is not symbolism. It is signal. It tells the organization what matters, who is trusted, and whose judgment counts when things are hard. If you want a GC who protects the business and enables growth, you have to place them where decisions actually get made. Anything less is pretending.

Most CEOs replace the General Counsel when Legal becomes a bottleneck. This CEO didn’t replace anyone. She transformed her entire Legal function without changing a single lawyer. When we first spoke, she was direct: “Legal is slowing the business down. Sales avoids them. Deals stall. We’re missing targets because contracts take 45 days.” I met with the GC. The GC wasn’t the problem. He was capable, ethical, and committed — just operating in a system built for caution, not for growth. Instead of “fixing Legal” by restructuring, I advised the CEO to do something far more effective: Reframe how she led Legal. Shift the mission from “protect the company” to “accelerate revenue safely.” Together, we implemented business discipline: • Established clear KPIs: cycle time, risk reduction, customer satisfaction, outside counsel ROI • Deployed technology: CLM + automated approvals • Created dashboards reviewed with finance and operations • Recognized Legal wins — faster deals, cleaner audits, fewer disputes Six months later: Contract cycle reduced from 45 days to 18 days Legal spend down 15% Revenue up 22% Reputation score for Legal up 60 points No personnel changes. No mass rewrites of policy. Just leadership clarity, aligned incentives, and operational rigor. Because the CEO’s job isn’t to know the law — it’s to lead the executive who helps the company win safely. Today’s top GCs don’t simply manage risk. They integrate strategy, regulation, and foresight into how the company operates. And when CEOs lead Legal with the same expectations they apply to Finance, HR, or Operations? Deals move faster. Risk becomes manageable. Trust increases. The culture strengthens. Legal stops being a cost center — and becomes a competitive advantage.

Your best lawyer is often your bottleneck. I caught up with a GC last week who couldn’t work out why turnaround kept slipping. The team had grown. The headcount was there. And yet, the work still backed up. Then the conversation stumbled over the line that explained it: “Nothing significant goes out without me seeing it.” There it was. Every complex matter, every sensitive negotiation, every real judgement call routed through one person. Her. The most capable lawyer in the building had become the narrowest point in the pipeline. This is the trap that comes with being good at the job. People trust you, so they bring you everything. You absorb it, because you can. And slowly the function reorganises itself around your personal capacity rather than the team’s. The problem is that hiring rarely fixes it. You can add three lawyers beneath a bottleneck and you still have a bottleneck. The work still queues behind the person who has to approve it. The legal functions I’ve worked with that broke this pattern did something harder than hiring. They built structure that distributed trust, not just tasks. Clear thresholds for what genuinely needs senior sign-off and what doesn’t. Playbooks that put judgement into the system instead of leaving it locked in one head. Permission for other people to decide. It feels risky at first - often it involves changing a whole personal way of working. That’s tough. You’re letting go of work you’ve always controlled. But the alternative is a function whose ceiling is set by how many hours its best lawyer can stay awake. Your value isn’t in touching everything. It’s in building a team that doesn’t need you to. What would stop moving if you took a fortnight off this summer, and why does it have to route through you? #legaloperations #inhouselegal #generalcounsel #melius

10 Things a General Counsel Should Do in Their First 10 Days The first ten days in a new organization set the tone for how the legal function is seen — as either a blocker or a builder. Here’s how I’d spend them. Day 1 – Meet the Team Meet everyone in Legal, not just your direct reports. Understand what each person actually does, where they feel stuck, and what energizes them. Keep the tone human, not hierarchical — this is where trust starts. Day 2 – Meet the Business Leaders Sit with each BU head. Ask what keeps them up at night. What are their revenue targets, operational bottlenecks, or recurring deal issues? What kind of legal partnership do they actually need Day 3 – Finance Understand how Finance drives the organization. Learn the key targets, the rhythm of quarterly closes, and how they track receivables or project cash flow. You’ll learn quickly where legal support can accelerate outcomes. Day 4 – Sales Listen to the sales pitch. What are they promising? What objections do they face? What legal clauses slow deals down? This tells you where legal friction exists and what guardrails can be simplified without losing protection. Day 5 – Marketing Understand how the brand speaks to the world. What’s the campaign approval process? How do they manage IP, influencer tie-ups, or brand risk? Legal can often be the quiet enabler of creativity, not its censor. Day 6 – Compliance & Audit Get a sense of the compliance landscape. What’s automated, what’s manual, what’s cultural? Early mapping prevents reactive firefighting later. Day 7 – HR Meet HR leadership. Discuss employment templates, disciplinary procedures, ethics programs, and the tone of internal communications. HR and Legal together define organizational trust. Day 8 – Operations & Supply Chain Understand how procurement and operations interact with suppliers. Are contracts back-to-back? Where do delays or disputes usually emerge? This builds your risk radar fast. Day 9 – IT & Data Security Meet the cybersecurity and data teams. Understand data-flow, privacy compliance, and incident response. No GC can lead today without knowing where the data lives and how it moves. Day 10 – CEO & Strategy Finally, meet the CEO. Don’t go in with a report — go in with perspective. Share what you’ve learned in your first ten days and how Legal can align with business growth and resilience. #mehakoberoi #generalcounsel

A GC I know just started at a new company and asked me what she should focus on first. I told her the same thing I'd tell anyone walking into a new legal team: Don't fix anything for the first 30 days. Instead, just watch. When I started at an early in-house role, I wanted to prove myself immediately. Biiiiig “new GC” energy. I walked in with a list of things I was going to change and started making moves in week 2. It was a terrible idea. I restructured the contract review process before I understood why it was set up that way in the first place. Turns out there was a reason approvals went through 3 people - our VP of Operations had been burned by a vendor contract two years earlier and insisted on seeing everything over $50k. I didn't know that story. I just saw inefficiency and tried to fix it, and it took me 3 months to rebuild the trust I lost in those first 2 weeks. The next time around, I did it differently. For the first 30 days, I just asked questions and wrote down what I learned. Where do contract requests actually come from? Not the official process, the real one. Who are the 3 people in the company that everyone goes to when they need something done fast? What's the one thing that makes the CEO nervous about legal? Which contracts does Finance care about most and why? After 30 days of just listening, I had a completely different picture than what the org chart suggested. I knew which problems were real and which ones were just loud. I knew who the allies were. And I knew exactly what to fix first (and more importantly, what to leave alone). The instinct when you start a new role is to show impact fast. But in legal, moving fast before you understand the political landscape is how you make enemies out of people who should've been your biggest advocates. If you're starting a new GC role: 30 days of listening will save you 6 months of cleanup. Write everything down. Ask everyone the same 5 questions. The roadmap will build itself.

12 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 90 𝗱𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗚𝗖 (based on my 15 years of wins, misses, and lessons) If I had to start over as a first-time GC, here’s what I’d do. Each move helps you add value and impact from Day 1. 1/ 𝗗𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗿𝘂𝘀𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝘅 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 ↳ Ask more, listen longer ↳ Your pause builds trust 2/ 𝗔𝘀𝗸 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁) 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 ↳ People will tell you, if you ask with humility ↳ This builds instant credibility 3/ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 ↳ No business model = no useful advice ↳ Fluency earns you a seat early 4/ 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸 𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 ↳ Not the written one, the lived one ↳ Align your lens or miss the mark 5/ 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 ↳ Ask what motivates them ↳ People follow leaders who listen 6/ 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆’𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 ↳ Ask: how can we help them win? ↳ Strategy starts with alignment 7/ 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗘𝗢 ↳ Don’t try to impress ↳ Be reliable and early 8/ 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗮𝘄 ↳ Dollars. Timelines. Trade-offs. ↳ Impact = clarity, not complexity 9/ 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝗹𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗼𝗼𝗺𝘀 ↳ Product. Pricing. Sales. Ops. ↳ Influence comes from proximity 10/ 𝗗𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸, 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝘀 ↳ Fix one friction point ↳ Build momentum early 11/ 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗷𝘂𝗱𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 ↳ What you say and how you say it ↳ Credibility compounds fast 12/ 𝗖𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗽 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 ↳ Delegations, policies, cap table ↳ Prevent quiet chaos Every new GC wants to prove their value fast. This is how you do it, with purpose, not panic. Have I missed anything? ♻️ Repost to support a future first-time GC 🔔 Follow Adrian Moffatt for more in-house advice #FirstTimeGC #GeneralCounsel #LegalLeadership #First90days #AspiringGC #InhouseCounsel