The path to the General Counsel spot is not always what people expect. Case in point, Stephen Sitley, now SVP, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Sears Holdings Corp. From Temp to General Counsel – it can happen:
“When Stephen Sitley was named senior vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Sears Holdings Corp., my mind raced through the Way Back machine to a fond memory of my roots as a legal recruiter. In 1993, I was cutting my teeth and learning this business with a legal staffing firm called The Wallace Law Registry (now part of Kelly Services). My boss and mentor Shelley Wallace had landed a big fish in the Chicago in-house legal market—an opportunity to recruit talent for Sears….Sears was under a hiring freeze, so Shelley convinced the general counsel at the time to try an unconventional approach to staffing his department—use something called “contract attorneys….My first placement at Sears was Stephen Sitley, who worked via The Wallace Law Registry for several months until the hiring freeze was lifted, and the company quickly hired him. Twenty-four years and numerous promotions later, Steve is now the top lawyer at a company that may have lost some of its iconic luster, but remains a significant employer of in-house talent. I would say Steve’s assignment turned out to be everything but temporary.”
Read: The GC who started as a “temp” at EversLegal