Head of Legal and Company Secretary: Case Study
Background
When contemplating how to undertake a head of legal and company secretary search, our client, a substantial UK real estate business, was recommended to engage Florit Legal by one of the corporate partners in a Top 20 commercial law firm. Until that time, the client had habitually outsourced legal and governance work to external lawyers. Here, there was effectively a ‘clean slate’ to design a candidate profile which would suit the company’s core needs for legal advice.
Challenge
As with most first in-house head of legal or company secretary search assignments, the first challenge is defining exactly what type of lawyer would benefit the company most. Sometimes, companies misjudge this and can end up recruiting the wrong person.
This can be overcome by clients engaging us in early dialogue, to scope out roles, well before they come to market. In other cases, like this, it is more appropriate for one of our law firm contacts to offer their consultancy services, and then to communicate their findings to us and the company, as to the recommended candidate profile. We are then left to advise on an appropriate solution to fulfil the requirement.
We frequently work with external law firms to scope out the requirements of a head of legal search assignment prior to our involvement and can recommend individuals who are particularly experienced in doing so, regardless of a client’s location.
Solution
Following a series of consultations with key stakeholders, a candidate profile emerged for a candidate with a corporate transactional background, who would join the senior management team, co-ordinate all external legal advice and act as company secretary. The brief required a senior lawyer with in-house experience as well as experience of having acted as a company secretary.
The opportunity was advertised in the main niche legal recruitment media. The advertisement produced a substantial response and this, together with our own search and networking activities, resulted in a long list of around 90 candidates. These included 2 candidates who were already known to the company, but who were referred to Florit Legal to be independently benchmarked against the shortlist of other candidates we were yet to produce. A sole legal adviser was appointed into the role of General Counsel and Company Secretary.
