Deborah Solmor, founder of Ready Set GC and Chief Legal & People Officer at WARF, takes a hard look at the number that stung legal departments this fall: 86% of general counsel say their teams contribute significantly to company goals, but only 17% of other C-suite executives agree. We covered that value gap last week. Solmor’s piece is the useful follow-up: what to actually do about it.
Her diagnosis on legal department value is blunt. Most GCs measure it by how well the department runs, while the business measures what legal helped it achieve. Her fixes are practical: share business priorities with your team, ask colleagues how legal is doing (and listen), get in before decisions are made, and tell results stories instead of reciting volume. For any general counsel or chief legal officer, this is the job now, and it is the skill that General Counsel jobs are hiring for. Our guide on how to become a general counsel says the same.
As Solmor puts it: “Legal departments are good at reporting what they do: contracts reviewed, litigation managed, policies updated, and training completed.”
Read: Legal Thinks It’s Adding Value. Does Leadership Agree? at Ready Set GC