Australian Financial Review, 22 March 2002 p. 59
At the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association's national conference in Sydney today in-house counsel will be told that they have to "get inside the mind of the CEO to succeed".
The onus is firmly on the head of the law department to demonstrate its worth to the CEO or risk becoming irrelevant says Andrew Horsley, a Sydney executive search consultant and former legal counsel at Esso Australia.
Speaking to The Australian Financial Review about how chief executives judge their lawyers on the eve of the conference, Mr Horsley said that because law departments in Australia were leaner, "word quickly gets around as to lawyers who are most responsive to clients' needs".
There was no such thing as an ideal corporate lawyer he said. The job was much more about relationship management and perception.
A CEO is much more likely to seek out the advice of in-house counsel if he or she was perceived as capable rather than a tame "rubber stamp", a common complaint, Mr Horsley said.