Guide · For companies
A retained search, written into a letter before anyone is called. The sitting field is mapped, not posted. The shortlist is a set of assessed dossiers, not a stack of CVs.
The clock is measured from the letter, not from the first CV. Posting the seat is not a search. It is a leak.
A retained general counsel search starts with a written Mandate Blueprint, maps the sitting field rather than posting the seat, and reaches a shortlist in 24 days (median of 38 GC and CLO files since 2017). Interviews and offer engineering run in weeks 5 to 9. Median brief to accepted offer is 11 weeks, with a range of 8 to 16 weeks.
Those 38 files sit inside 230+ in-house and corporate placements completed since 2017. The same desk closed deputy and Head of Legal searches in 10 weeks (of 47) and senior counsel in 8 weeks (of 96). An interim GC is a different product: 7 days to start, of 60+ engagements, counted apart from the 230+. The methodology page is the one a committee should keep open while it reads this guide.
| Stage | Week | Owner | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandate Blueprint | 1 | Company + search | Scorecard, fee letter, off-limits |
| Total-market mapping | 1 to 2 | Search | Named sitting field, not a posting |
| Private outreach | 2 to 4 | Search | Blind conversations both ways |
| Shortlist with dossiers | 3 to 4 | Search | Assessed names the board can sit with |
| Interviews and offer | 5 to 9 | Company + search | Finalists; offer engineered |
Median shortlist 24 days; median brief to accepted offer 11 weeks (range 8 to 16). Of 38 GC and CLO files, 2017 to 2026.
Source: Sartori & Partners corporate track record, 2017-2026.
If the brief is the incumbent's job description with the name rubbed out, the search will return the incumbent's profile. Write the job the company now has.
The Blueprint is the only document that should exist before a name is spoken. It names the reporting line (in the 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey, 84 percent of 1,049 respondents report to the chief executive), whether the corporate secretary book travels with the seat (62 percent of that survey's respondents hold majority oversight of it), and the regulator that actually reaches this company. The Justice Department's Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, updated September 2024, asks whether the programme is designed for this line of business, whether it is resourced and empowered, and whether it works in practice. Those three questions belong in the scorecard. Pedigree does not answer them.
The letter also carries the commercial terms so a CFO can sign without a second memo: a fixed fee on retained GC, CLO and CCO work, paid in three instalments (engagement, shortlist, start); a 12-month replacement window; off-limits of 24 months on the client's legal department; and a rule that we never approach lawyers we placed for as long as they stay. The fees and guarantee guide works a cash example. The Blueprint does not. It records that the terms exist, in writing, before outreach.
For a company hiring its first legal officer, the Blueprint is a different document — commercial breadth, builder's instinct, no deputy bench underneath. That case is the first general counsel guide and the first general counsel search. For a company replacing a sitting officer, the scorecard is succession: board access, the compliance book, the secretary book, the next regulated event. Our succession criteria are written from those instruments, not from the outgoing CV.
The people who can do this job are employed. They will not see a posting. The incumbent will.
Mapping is a named field: sitting GCs, deputy GCs and Heads of Legal whose last three years match the perimeter in the Blueprint. On a Boston in-house search that perimeter is often FDA and quality-system ownership; on a Houston industrial file it is carve-out then public-company cadence; on a New York corporate file it is the examination the candidate has already sat through. The field is the sitting population, not the people who updated a job board this month.
Posting a GC seat does three things a retained search is paid not to do. It tells the incumbent the board has started. It tells the market the company is in play. It fills the inbox with people who are looking, which is the opposite of the sitting field. CLOC's 2025 State of the Industry Report put median legal-department headcount at 77 full-time equivalents. That is a department. A GC search is one officer. Treating it as a vacancy advert is how the 8-to-16-week range becomes an open-ended committee.
The sitting field is the map; the page a GC reads does not need its row counts. What the committee needs is the rule: the search starts from the people already doing the job in this sector and this city, including people who are not in the city's job boards. A Riyadh energy file that only called Riyadh CVs would have missed the sanctions desk the client actually needed.
Blind both ways until mutual interest is confirmed. No CV leaves us without written candidate consent. An NDA is available on request. Conflicts are checked before outreach.
A GC search has two secrets and they are not the same. The company's secret is that the seat is opening — because the incumbent is still in it, because a deal is live, because the board has not told the executive team. The candidate's secret is that they took the call. Both are held until each side has said, in terms, that they want the next conversation. We do not send a CV to a client to "see if there is interest." We do not name the company to a candidate to "test the market."
Conflicts are a pre-outreach gate, not a closing surprise. A lawyer who has a live matter against the company, or who sits on a panel the company is about to fire, is not a long-list name. The 24-month off-limits on the client's legal department is the other half of the same rule: we will not recruit the team the new GC is about to inherit. We will not approach anyone we placed, for as long as they stay. Those terms live in the letter, which is why a CFO can sign it. The London private-credit manager who told us the fee, replacement window and off-limits had to be in the letter before anyone was called was describing the only process we will run.
A CV describes a career. A dossier answers the scorecard. The board should not have to reverse-engineer the second from the first.
The shortlist on a GC file is four names, not fourteen. Each dossier records deals the candidate ran (not "supported"), regulators they have sat across (not "advised on"), teams they built (size, where the second and third hires went), and board fluency (which committee, which clock, which escalation). The Justice Department's September 2024 evaluation still asks whether the compliance programme is empowered. A dossier that cannot name the last examination is not a CCO-adjacent GC dossier, whatever the title on the CV.
ACC's 2026 survey has 79 percent of chief legal officers almost always at board meetings and 74 percent describing themselves as providing proactive strategic counsel. The interview that tests those two facts is not a technical grilling by the sitting deputy. It is a director conversation. We do not put a name in front of the board that has only met management. The succession search and the in-house counsel recruiting line use the same dossier shape; the difference is the scorecard, not the file format.
Timeline: Shortlist day 24 · offer week 11 · of 38 GC/CLO files
Management tests whether the lawyer can do the work. Independent directors test whether they can hear bad news in time.
Sequence the room. The first conversations are with the chief executive and the chair of the committee that owns the legal risk — usually audit. Only then the rest of the executive team. A GC who reports to the CEO, as 84 percent of ACC's 2026 respondents do, cannot be hired by a process that never puts them in a room with that CEO without a filter. The candidate who "interviewed well with HR" is not a data point on this seat.
Directors should ask the questions the instruments require. Who did you last escalate past? Which examination did you personally own? When did you last tell a chief executive that a deal could not close on the advertised timetable? ABA Model Rule 1.13 makes the in-house lawyer the lawyer of the organisation; 17 CFR Part 205 puts the chief legal counsel on the first rung of up-the-ladder reporting. Those are not trivia. They are the job. A twenty-minute briefing is enough to settle whether a committee wants that conversation designed before names are released.
Price the package before the finalists walk in. An offer designed in the room is how a 96 percent acceptance rate becomes a declined file.
Cash is not a proxy-disclosure number. The ACC and Empsight 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey, effective 1 March 2025, puts median total cash for the group general counsel and chief legal officer grouping at $410,000 on a median base of $330,000. Median total target direct compensation for that grouping is $503,000; the deputy tier sits at $424,000. Those are survey figures. They are not the proxy-disclosed total-compensation median at the 500 largest US listed companies, which is a different series and a different universe. Do not blend them into a cash offer. Stage bands we actually price against — Series B to C first GC, growth-stage, PE-backed, mid-cap listed — live on the GC salary page.
Offer acceptance on this line is 96 percent of the offers that go out. Retention of placed in-house leaders is 97 percent at 12 months and 91 percent at 24 months. Those are programme rates, of the 230+ in-house placements, not a promise about a named file. The replacement guarantee is the commercial backstop: 12 months on GC, CLO and CCO, 6 months on other in-house seats. A board that has not settled equity, notice and start date before the final conversation is negotiating against a sitting employer that has had months to prepare a counter. We engineer the offer. We do not invent it in the last hour.
Signature is not the placement. The placement is the first regulated event the new officer owns without the search still in the room.
Notice on a sitting GC is rarely two weeks. It is a handover of live matters, a panel that still has to be paid, and a board calendar that does not stop. We stay in the file through resignation timing, any relocation, and the first 90 days: check-ins with the chief executive and with the placed officer, separately. The point is to hear a problem while it is still a staffing problem and not yet a failed hire. Of the 38 GC and CLO files, the ones that needed a second conversation in month two were almost always a reporting-line ambiguity the Blueprint had left polite.
If the company needs coverage on day six because the incumbent has already left, that is not a reason to rush the permanent slate. It is a reason to run interim legal talent on a day-rate alongside the retained search. The interim versus permanent guide is the decision; the dual-track calendar is the method. Days billed on the interim are credited against the later retained fee. The two products are not a single confused mandate.
Scorecard, reporting line, regulator, fee, guarantee, off-limits. Letter signed. No names.
Sitting field against the perimeter. City and sector, including people not on the local boards.
Blind both ways. Conflicts checked before the first call, not after the first meeting.
Four dossiers. Deals run, regulators faced, teams built, board fluency.
Directors, then package, then notice. Median accepted offer at week 11.
Separate conversations with the CEO and the officer. The search is not finished at signature.
A search firm that will do anything is not a firm a general counsel can put in front of a board. These are the refusals.
We will not post a GC, CLO, CCO or Head-of-Legal seat. We will not run those four searches on contingency. We will not send unsolicited CVs. We will not approach a lawyer we placed, for as long as they stay in post. We will not recruit from a client's legal department for 24 months after a mandate. We will not tell a committee the pool is deep when the perimeter the Blueprint described is a dozen people. Legal operations was that file in Austin: 21 days to a shortlist of people who had stood up intake and e-billing, of 12 legal-ops placements, because pretending otherwise wastes a quarter.
We will not write a scorecard that is the outgoing officer's CV. We will not staff a board interview with people who have only met human resources. We will not treat proxy-disclosed total compensation at the largest US issuers as a cash offer for a growth-stage first GC. We will not name a client company, a client law firm, or a placed lawyer on a public page. The for companies desk is the front door; this guide is the method behind it. If the honest answer is "promote the deputy," we will say so rather than run a search the board does not need.
The shortlist arrived in just over three weeks and every name could already sit with our board. The person we hired is still in post two years later.
Eleven weeks median from brief to accepted offer, of 38 GC and CLO files since 2017. The range is 8 to 16 weeks. The shortlist arrives at 24 days. A methodology sits on the data shelf. Senior counsel closes faster (8 weeks, of 96 files); a cross-border Head of Legal runs longer (14 weeks).
Because the sitting field is not looking, and a posting shops the incumbent. GC, CLO, CCO and Head-of-Legal searches are retained only: a fixed fee, agreed in writing, paid in three instalments (engagement, shortlist, start). Contingency pays for a start. It does not pay for a map of people who will not answer a job board. The fee, guarantee and off-limits letter is signed before anyone is called.
The finalists meet the board. Independent directors test access and escalation; management tests the work. In the 2026 ACC Chief Legal Officers Survey of 1,049 respondents, 84 percent report directly to the chief executive and 79 percent almost always attend board meetings. A slate that has never sat with a board is not a GC slate. The audit committee meets the compliance owner when the seat carries that book — the Justice Department's Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (September 2024) asks whether the programme is resourced and empowered, which is a director question.
Yes: blind both ways until mutual interest is confirmed, and the sitting GC is not shopped. Succession is a confidentiality problem first. Our general counsel succession desk writes the letter, the off-limits and the cover story before mapping starts. Posting the seat is how the incumbent learns the board has started.
We continue under the same letter. Completion on retained corporate mandates is 92 percent since 2017. Offer acceptance on the offers that go out is 96 percent. A declined offer is usually a package that was not settled before finalists were seen, or a notice period the board had not priced. The search does not restart; the next name on the assessed slate is already in the file.
Departure from the role, not promotion out of it. On retained GC, CLO and CCO searches the replacement window is 12 months from start; other in-house searches run 6 months. If the placed lawyer leaves inside the window, we rerun the search without a second fee. Promotion into a larger group role, a carve-out that the board designed, or a sponsor exit that retires the seat are not replacement events. The methodology page records the same terms.
The clock and the completion figures are Sartori files. The shape of the office is ACC. Pay is ACC and Empsight, unblended with large-cap proxy totals. The compliance questions are the Justice Department's.
ACC 2026 is 1,049 chief legal officers, published 29 January 2026. ACC/Empsight 2025 is effective 1 March 2025. CLOC 2025 State of the Industry reports median legal-department headcount. The Justice Department Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs was updated September 2024. Sartori clocks are of 38 GC and CLO files, 2017 to 2026, identical on every page that cites them.
This page is the method. The neighbouring pages are the two searches it is used on, and the commercial terms a CFO signs.
The other search: a company with no legal function deciding readiness, structure and whether the answer is full-time, fractional or a panel.
Read the first-hire guideSuccession criteria for a second or later search: board access, the compliance and secretary books, and the regulator that actually reaches this company.
Read the succession scorecardFixed fee, three instalments, 12-month and 6-month replacement windows, and 24-month off-limits on the client's legal department.
Read fees and guaranteeAlso on the company path: hiring in-house counsel inside a PE-backed company, which legal work belongs in-house, and the salary and compensation benchmarks shelf. To brief: contact the corporate desk.
For boards and chief executives
A retained GC or CLO search, written into a fee and off-limits letter in week 1. Shortlist in 24 days. Median accepted offer at 11 weeks, of 38 files since 2017.
