Hi there,
The responsibilities of GCs are growing.
It’s a trend that’s been happening for over a century now.
And it’s not slowing down.
I was reminded of this by Bjarne Philip Tellmann, General Counsel of Haleon — when we chatted recently on the podcast.
Bjarne is a legend in General Counsel circles.
He literally “wrote the book” — like a real book — about leading an in-house legal team as a GC. (It's called Building an Outstanding Legal Team: Battle-Tested Strategies from a General Counsel.)
One of the most insightful parts of our conversation centered around the evolution of the General Counsel over the past century.
Here’s the timeline⌛, in brief:
🦍 Paleo GC: At the turn of the last century, where the GC role was really more about acting like air traffic control to the work being done by outside firms.
🌐 GC 1.0: On the heels of WWII and a push for globalization, GC teams were still small, and the job was doable — working closely with a handful of firms to handle matters.
💻 GC 2.0: The Cold War ends, China becomes a superpower, and computers emerge as a game changer, driving new complexity. In-house departments grow, as do their responsibilities and complexity.
🤖 GC 3.0: The Digital Revolution arrives. Big data, iPhones, social media. GCs are challenged to run operations in a much more complex environment, to do more with less than ever before. Technology is now table stakes.
🚀 GC 4.0: Moore’s law takes hold. Digital transformation accelerates exponentially. GCs must optimize to improve efficiency even more.
For those of us who have seen digital transformation coming, it can feel very pioneering 🤠 to go against the status quo.
Trying to find the right talent. Figuring out what experience is needed.
In short, “professionalizing” a new profession.
Bjarne’s final words of wisdom in this respect were this:
“We’re not all going to be experts in all technology. We don’t need to be.”
Rather, he said, it’s about “doubling down on our human skills and applying them to the real conundrum of how technology should most effectively be deployed, to enable legal services to be more customer friendly, lower cost, more accessible.”
This means asking questions such as:
- What should we do with the technology?
- Where do we need to deploy it?
- What can we hope to achieve?
I agree with Bjarne 💯.
When new technologies come along, it’s easy to forget that using them well is still a human problem — and an opportunity for leaders to shine.
