In-House Counsel

The Mystery Of In-House Titles

Titles alone aren’t helpful. If you want to know more about a person’s role or a particular job opening, you will need to do a little digging.

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Question markWhen I first entered private practice, I understood there were essentially two titles in law firms: associate and partner (or shareholder). I was clearly one, and the goal was to get to the other.

As I grew in my experience, I also began to see other titles like senior associate, equity partner, and variations on counsel: of counsel and special counsel, for instance. What was interesting was how the term counsel was elusive and could mean different things at different firms, although it usually meant that you were not on the partner track.

Even more mystical are titles of in-house counsel. I didn’t pay that much attention to in-house titles when I was a young law firm lawyer. To me, all in-house counsel was either my client or a prospective client, and I operated as such. But now that I am on this side of the house, I have to admit that the titles although more familiar to my ear, are still a mystery.

A large part of the reason why titles are confusing to me is because what the titles actually mean can vary across companies, depending on size, geography, industry and company culture. Contrary to presumption, you can’t always tell hierarchy or decision-making authority or level of influence from titles alone.

You may wonder why we pay attention to titles at all. If you are outside counsel, you may want to rely on title as a context clue as to whether someone in-house has hiring authority or the ability to give you business. If you are already in-house counsel, a common use case is when you are approached about a new opportunity or when you may be actively looking to make a move to another role. You may want to rely on title as a context clue as to the level of influence of the role, such as whether it is a leadership role.

Here are some titles and what they could mean.

Chief Legal Officer: this term is the least ambiguous and references the top executive or leader in a legal department. Other terms for this role could also be chief counsel, head of legal, and general counsel. If a company is large enough, there could be separate general counsels who lead specific segments of the company.

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Deputy General Counsel: this term is often used to refer to a second-in-command or the next line beneath the top executive in a legal department. Essentially they are “deputized” to act as general counsel as the GC may need.  Other terms used may be vice president of legal, associate general counsel, or assistant general counsel. Sometimes they are simply second-in-command and are general practitioners because they are responsible for a number of different legal areas. Other times they may only be responsible for one subject matter area such as labor and employment. I have also seen associate and assistant general counsel titles be used to connote “lower tiers” in the leadership hierarchy.

Senior Counsel: I’ve seen this term used to describe an in-house lawyer with a lot of experience or tenure. They may (or may not) manage other lawyers.

Managing counsel is also a generic term. This happens to be my title where I work, and although I don’t have any direct reports, I’ve seen this title at another company, and their managing counsel does supervise others.

The takeaway here is that titles alone aren’t helpful. And operating on presumption alone is ill-advised. If you want to know more about a person’s role or a particular job opening, you will need to dig deeper and develop a relationship so you can ask (if not that person, then someone else who knows).

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Meyling “Mey” Ly Ortiz is in-house at Toyota Motor North America. Her passions include mentoring, championing belonging, and a personal blog: TheMeybe.com. At home, you can find her doing her best to be a “fun” mom to a toddler and preschooler and chasing her best self on her Peloton. You can follow her on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/meybe/). And you knew this was coming: her opinions are hers alone.

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