Complete Guide to In-house Legal Job Titles: Variations of the Same Colour

In-house legal job titles are straightforward for lawyers but they can be a little confusing for you as a non-lawyer, faced with filling a newly created legal role in your company when you don’t engage in legal recruitment activities on a regular basis or it’s your very first time.

If you’re an internal recruiter, legal recruitment presents a challenging learning curve. The legal team may have rejected an initial candidate shortlist you thought was good. When you’re proud of normally exceeding expectations in other areas of the business, negative feedback can be disappointing. However, it’s not your fault! To a non-lawyer, comparing legal CVs can be like trying to distinguish between different shades of white paint on a wall. They can look pretty much the same to the untrained eye!

Choosing and advertising the wrong job title can lead to a lot of wasted time if the majority of applicants have unsuitable salary expectations. Similarly, trying to headhunt someone at the right level, or with a particular job, in an industry competitor or in a law firm can be challenging when you discover such a wide variation in job titles from one business to the next. With some companies being overwhelmed with unsuitable applications, and in-house lawyers not having the time to do the heavy lifting at the start of a recruitment process, the problem can be acute.

So, how do you decide on the best options when hiring an in-house lawyer? How do you recognise the right target candidate to headhunt? And how do you make the best use of your time on both fronts?

In this article, we break things down for talent acquisition managers and for companies undertaking a legal recruitment project for the very first time. And if you are still scratching your head at the end of it, please just give us a call. We’ll be happy to give you the direction you need.

Executive Summary

Understanding legal job titles is crucial for effective in-house legal recruitment. This comprehensive guide covers:

– Key differences between various in-house legal titles
– How company size and structure influence legal role titles
– Common pitfalls in legal job title selection
– Practical guidelines for choosing appropriate titles
– Impact of titles on recruitment success

Perfect for: Talent acquisition managers, HR professionals, and business leaders hiring their first in-house lawyer.

Introduction

In our business, we recently had a technology support issue, when trying to get two online SaaS tools to ‘play nicely’ with one another. This is relevant for no other reason than it led to some support dialogue with ‘Paul’ whose employer had chosen to refer to him as a “Customer Success Hero”!

At the time it struck us as a rather novel job title.  Naturally, the resultant office banter centred around: What promotion prospects would there be? “…Superhero”, perhaps? And what is the appropriate dress code?  Cape? Full face mask? Red underpants over blue leggings?  Whilst Paul’s role was abundantly clear to the outsider, we doubted whether a similar naming convention could ever spill over into the in-house lawyer side of the legal profession? As far as we know, neither the “Risk Mitigation Warrior” or “Caped Contracts Crusader” has yet emerged!

Joking aside, it did cause us to reflect on the range of in-house legal job titles we encounter these days and how difficult it sometimes is for talent acquisition professionals to get to grips with the kaleidoscopic variations found in commerce, industry, financial services and law firms. These come as second nature to lawyers and legal recruiters, who have ‘grown up’ with them, but can be confusing for talent acquisition managers undertaking an in-house legal recruitment project for the very first time.

Understanding The Different In-house Legal Job Titles

Legal Job Title Inconsistencies Are Unavoidable

Even just a small cross-section of  legal recruitment projects we have undertaken shows wide range of titles.

The exact job title ascribed to an in-house legal role will vary according to size of company, rate of growth, the range of responsibilities, whether or not the business already has an existing legal department and where the headquarters is located.

A quick search of Linkedin uncovers as many as 60 permutations of what look like ‘standard’ in-house legal job title tags. Dig a bit further into the legal talent pool and you find more, such as ‘solicitor’, ‘barrister’, ‘associate’, ‘assistant’, ‘partner’, ‘director’, ‘legal executive’, or even ‘attorney’. Next, you might find those used descriptively by the individuals themselves, which can be different again – such as ‘commercial lawyer’ or ‘corporate lawyer’ and the like.

One talent acquisition manager once said to me “the primary reason we outsource legal recruitment is that I just don’t have time to learn this stuff and we need someone quickly”. Sifting through legal job applications for the very first time, or setting out to headhunt someone, soon uncovers a minefield with hardly any consistency to a non-lawyer.

This alone may go some of the way to explaining why some clients say to us that their internal process has stalled at the outset owing to the wrong people being presented to them by their internal recruitment colleagues.

Three Reasons to Choose the Correct In-house Legal Job Title

Some care is needed at the outset, when taking your legal role to market, from various angles. However, ultimately, it all boils down to whether or not you will have enough of the right candidates for your legal team to consider.

Let’s take a look at  why that might be:

Saturation: Legal Job Ad Overload

Whatever the role, you want the right candidate pool to not only see your role but find it compelling enough to apply.

With the seismic shift from print advertising to digital, the sheer volume of legal job advertising these days is huge. As a result, it’s all too easy for your particular job advert to get lost in the ‘noise’, with a passive advertising strategy. Even email alerts soon turn into something approximating spam given the number of jobs hitting your inbox that aren’t right. Inevitably, some people will miss it completely.

Choosing a generalist title such as In-house Lawyer or In-house Legal Counsel, may be factually correct but since there are so many examples of those out there, it may be better to use something more specific, in order to stand out. It depends on the situation. It’s much easier in industry sectors where there is a level of standardisation. Law firms are a good example of this. But the difference between one lawyer and another in industry is often less clear. So it pays to be specific.

When you consider that fewer than 20% of relevant candidates are actively seeking a new job at any one time, it’s important to get this right, or you will waste your time and your advertising spend.

Self Deselection

In recruitment, self-deselection (or “self-selection bias”) is the phenomenon whereby  candidates eliminate themselves from consideration for a role based solely on the job title, without fully considering the job description.

Some readers may find it difficult to accept that lawyers would rule themselves out of applying for a role based on a job title alone – especially when there’s little effort required for a candidate to click “Easy Apply”, these days, on roles they really aren’t qualified for. This is something many talent acquisition professionals may be all too familiar with.

Self-deselection happens for a variety of reasons.  Candidates may associate certain titles with specific levels of seniority or responsibility. Unconventional or vague titles might be misinterpreted or overlooked. The lawyers you want to attract are frequently under pressure and surrounded by information overload. With such high volumes of job adverts, yours can get overlooked or missed.

We once undertook a search assignment for a client who had previously failed to fill a newly created, first in-house lawyer role. Although, quite a senior position, advertising it as “Legal Counsel” prior to retaining us simply hadn’t triggered the desired response in the ideal candidate pool. Later, when we presented the same opportunity to the candidate we eventually helped them to hire, they told us they vaguely recalled seeing it advertised previously. However, they didn’t pursue it further since they thought it was a junior role and not the Head of Legal level role they were looking for.

Candidate Perceptions

Another example of this can occur in large multinational companies. Companies with an HQ in the US, Europe, or Asia-Pacific may reach a stage in their growth where they need to hire their first in-house lawyer in the UK. When they do they typically publish a job title that fits neatly into their existing global structure. For example, you might see roles advertised as ‘Regional Legal Counsel’, ‘Corporate Counsel’, or ‘UK  Legal Counsel’.

The problem with these is that the extent of the candidate pool may not be immediately apparent, without you digging into their responsibilities and reporting lines, or without them digging into the role – which takes time reviewing your respective candidate or job specifications and potentially a conversation between the two of you. Time pressures may not be on your side.

Some potential candidates may already hold the title of ‘General Counsel’ in the UK, but at a smaller company. While some roles at multinationals often offer greater scope and responsibility, some candidates may overlook them if they  appear to come with a less senior title. Whilst lawyers rarely decline positions solely because of the job title, this mismatch can reduce the number of interested parties – a perceived step down can create unease for some candidates. This may cause them not to apply, when they have exactly what you are looking for  and vice versa.

The appropriate job titles will depend upon each individual business, it’s size, structure, internal precedents, geographical footprint, scope of responsibilities and the legal salary budget. It’s these many facets that contribute to the varied landscape.

Here’s what you should consider.

Making Sense of Legal Job Title Structures

There are some basic considerations when deciding on job title and the best way to start depends on whether or not there is an existing legal and compliance team in place at the company and look at the structure.

Different considerations may apply if there is no existing legal team, and you are hiring your first in-house lawyer.

We will cover each of these two scenarios in turn.

“To a non-lawyer, comparing legal CVs can be like trying to distinguish between different shades of white paint on a wall. They can look pretty much the same to the untrained eye!”

Companies with Existing Legal Teams

Here in the UK, at a basic level, the primary legal job titles from the top down are typically: General Counsel (with a few other variations, such as Chief Legal Officer and Legal Director), Head of Legal, Senior Legal Counsel and Legal Counsel. If the top job also has corporate governance and compliance responsibilities thrown in, the role may carry a suffix “…and Company Secretary”.

This is the typical structure in an average-sized legal team.

There are downsides to this. For example, a Senior Legal Counsel might become a flight risk if their promotion to Head of Legal internally is blocked by a key person with that job already. So legal departments sometimes have to change their structure to accommodate more than one person with the title Head of Legal. This is the reason you may see more than one Head of Legal in a company – each with a different job title reflecting distinct areas of responsibility. These distinctions can be regional, divisional or technical. The same can be true of any of the other primary job titles. You can see how this plays out in the largest multinational companies below.

Large Multinationals With Existing Teams

Larger multi-jurisdictional and global businesses will usually want to remain consistent with their existing structure, when expanding their legal department into new territories. There is often little flexibility in some individual corporate structures, when it comes to new job titles (as can be seen in one of the above examples) and there are differences from one company to another.

In the largest ones, particularly those based in the Americas, it’s not uncommon to have more than one person whose job title incorporates the words “General Counsel” (with an added suffix or prefix) working under someone designated as Group General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer at the helm of the legal department.

For example, you might see General Counsel for particular specialisms (eg ‘General Counsel, M&A‘ or ‘General Counsel, Employment‘); and/or ‘General Counsel’ for particular geographical territories (eg Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific, or even down to specific groups of individual countries). Equally in some countries or territories essentially the same role might be designated Head of Legal, Regional Counsel, Associate General Counsel, Senior Counsel or other variations. There’s often no particular logic to this other than “we have always done it this way”.

UK Companies with Existing Legal Teams

In-house legal job titles in the UK can depend very much on the size of the team.

Outside the larger FTSE or AIM listed businesses (where it’s not uncommon to see legal department headcount numbers nudging towards three digits in a major bank or supermarket chain), the average number of lawyers in any in-house legal function in the UK usually hovers around 4 to 6 (excluding any non-fully qualified staff such as paralegals or legal assistants).

Although legal team structures vary hugely from sector to sector, in the UK the 3 most common ones are:

Average to Large UK Legal Team (7 and over)

Here, the most common scenario is illustrated in the above organogram. There’s a General Counsel (or possibly General Counsel & Company Secretary, if those two roles are fused together), supported by a team.

If the team is substantial, or growing quickly, it might conceivably include one or more Heads of Legal, responsible for small teams of other junior to mid-level Legal Counsel or Senior Legal Counsel. Together each of the smaller teams may have a specialist focus (eg contracts, employment or dispute resolution).

The General Counsel may have responsibility for company secretarial or other compliance and governance professionals and is working with a succession plan in mind. This is most likely in FTSE or AIM listed businesses outside the FTSE 100, or in large private equity environments, where the company has yet to float (or formerly listed businesses which have recently been taken private).

Smaller UK Legal Team (2-6)

Here there is usually a General Counsel or Head of Legal at the head of the legal team. These senior legal titles, may also be suffixed by other wider responsibilities.  So you may have a “General Counsel & Company Secretary” or “Head of Legal & Compliance” as appropriate. They will most likely have surrounded themselves with a team of people with the titles Legal Counsel at entry- to mid-level. And at mid- to senior-level there are likely to be people with the title Senior Legal Counsel, Deputy/Assistant General Counsel or Deputy/Assistant Head of Legal.

Basic Table of In-house Legal Job Titles in the UK

In-house Legal Job Titles in the UK according to company size, common responsibilities, reporting lines and remuneration level.

Companies Without an Existing Legal Team

When Hiring a Sole Lawyer / First In-house Lawyer

The largest inconsistencies in job titles tend to occur in the first in-house lawyer or ‘sole legal counsel’ category. This is a lawyer who hasn’t yet been given the budget to build a legal team (a common frustration among sole in-house lawyers).

Titles here vary from General Counsel or Head of Legal (as above), through to Company Solicitor, In-house Lawyer, In-house Legal Counsel or even Legal Manager, to name just a few of the permutations clients have come to us with.

To decide what is the most appropriate, you first need to take a look at the range of responsibilities, the structure into which the lawyer will be introduced, any grading structure they need to fit into, and whether the role is on the executive leadership team, or middle management level, and what the future might look like for that person and the way your company handles its legal matters in the most cost-effective manner.

Questions to Ask when Hiring a First In-house Lawyer

• How extensive will the legal role be? Do you want a lawyer to specialise in a particular area of law, or do you prefer a generalist lawyer who can turn their hand to a range of legal issues? A generalist role may require a greater level and breadth of experience, larger budget and therefore lean more towards the title General Counsel or Head of Legal.
• Will your in-house lawyer be involved in strategic matters and change projects or will their role be relatively narrow – such as working on sales and supplier contracts? The more strategic and developmental the role, the more likely it is to warrant the job title General Counsel.
• Will your lawyer have additional responsibility for company secretarial matters, corporate governance and other regulatory compliance issues? A whole range of options are possible here.
• Will you be looking to have them grow their responsibility for these or other matters over time and build an in-house legal team? If there’s no team building involved, a role might fairly be called Legal Counsel.
• Will other non-legal professionals report into them? Smaller companies often have lawyers being responsible for other business issues. Common examples include HR, Insurance, Procurement – all of which require legal problem solving even if the Head of Legal needs support from a specialist HR, Risk or Contracts Manager respectively.
• Is the reason you are hiring them to reduce external legal spend and will you continue to use external lawyers? A brief to reduce external legal spend is all well and good, but one lawyer will not be able do that all by themselves.

It goes without saying that, in most cases, each candidate will desire a role with a job title that shows a career trajectory if they currently perform a role with a lesser job title. This becomes less of an issue with more senior candidates who have already reached the level of General Counsel. Few though will want to appear as if they are moving backwards and it’s not unusual for a role which was first advertised as a Head of Legal position morph into a General Counsel appointment at the end of the process or within the first 12 months of the appointee’s start date if the candidate held that title before joining your business.

Salary Considerations: What is your legal salary budget?

An existing legal grading structure will clearly give some guidance on salary and job title. Where the person you are hiring will be joining an existing team of in-house lawyers, salary and job title precedents are very likely to have been market-tested already. If you are looking for a Legal Counsel to work alongside a Senior Legal Counsel and report into the latter or a Head of Legal, then salary parameters are likely to be carefully pegged to these other two positions.

Similarly, where you are creating a new in-house legal function and hiring your first lawyer, your existing grading structures for other roles, although helpful, may result in a salary which is too low to justify the title Head of Legal or General Counsel and you may attract the wrong candidates. If you set the salary too low (for example, to achieve parity with a financial controller when the legal role also reports to the CFO), you may only have enough in the budget to cover the salary of someone with say up to 3 years PQE (post-qualification experience), which perhaps militates against adopting those titles. Florit Legal’s salary guide for in-house lawyers in London, and the corresponding salary guide for in-house lawyers in the UK regions, set out typical base salaries at each level.

In general terms it pays to just remember that the more strategic and broad the role is, the more experience is likely to be required. If both are needed, then the higher is the likelihood that the role should be designated General Counsel. If budgets are tight then a ‘lesser’ job title may be more appropriate – in order not to attract a disproportionate number of candidates that are beyond your company’s reach financially. The matrix below may be helpful to some here, but it is simplistic and should only serve as a guide. It’s not a substitute for picking our brains for 15 minutes! So, if in doubt, please get in touch.

In Summary

Ultimately, your choice of in-house legal job title is more important than you might think. There are many practical implications associated with it when setting out to hire an in-house lawyer. The job title presents everyone with a framework to work within – a convenient ‘shorthand’ description of a role’s extent and seniority. Whilst this might be apparent to some; it’s not apparent to everyone unless they have a legal or legal recruitment background. A job title never tells us the whole story.

How We Can Help

If you’re looking to hire an in-house legal and compliance professional, our services simplify this into the six different scenarios in which we can help you.

If you still need some further advice, please get in touch with us today to discuss your needs and how best to describe the role to the outside world if you’re about to advertise something.