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Corporate · Chief legal officer

Chief legal officer search for listed and large private companies

The CLO is a C-suite seat. The officer reports to the CEO, sits with the board, and holds enterprise risk and M&A. The title on the last business card is not the brief.

Brief a search How we run a search
01 Direct answer

A chief legal officer search hires the lawyer who reports to the CEO and sits with the board.

CLO searches sit inside 38 General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer placements since 2017. There is no separate published count of CLO-titled hires.

Lorenzo Sartori — Founder, Sartori & Partners — Chief legal officer search: retained C-suite seat, 24-day shortlist, 11-week median offer

A chief legal officer search is the retained search for the lawyer who reports to the chief executive and sits with the board. Of 38 General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer searches since 2017, the shortlist arrived in 24 days and the median accepted offer in 11 weeks, range 8 to 16 weeks. The Association of Corporate Counsel's 2026 survey of 1,049 chief legal officers found 84 percent reporting to the chief executive. A NASDAQ-listed medtech in Boston hired a successor general counsel: shortlist of four on day 24, accepted offer in week 11.

A chief legal officer is the company's legal officer at the executive table. The seat reports to the chief executive, has a standing path into the board, and carries enterprise risk — compliance and the corporate secretary book, or a defined split with those officers — plus the legal side of M&A and expansion. It is not a first general counsel who still drafts the customer contracts, and it is not a quiet replacement of a sitting counsel unless the board has said the next officer is a CLO. That replacement, run while the incumbent is still in the chair, is a general counsel succession search.

Sartori & Partners has completed 230+ in-house and corporate placements since 2017, of which 38 were General Counsel or Chief Legal Officer. The GC and CLO clock on those 38 searches is 24 days to shortlist and 11 weeks median to accepted offer, range 8 to 16 weeks. Offer acceptance on corporate mandates is 96 percent. Of placed in-house leaders, 97 percent were still in post at 12 months and 91 percent at 24 months. Retained corporate mandates complete at 92 percent. The replacement term on a retained GC or CLO search is 12 months.

The buyer is the chief executive, the board, and the nomination committee of a listed company or a large private company. Sartori & Partners was founded in early 2017 by Lorenzo Sartori. Outreach runs against a market map of 1,480,000+ lawyers. How that map is maintained is on the research programme.

Seat
C-suite legal officer. Reports to the CEO. Board access. Enterprise risk and M&A.
Clock
Shortlist in 24 days; median accepted offer in 11 weeks; range 8-16 weeks (38 GC/CLO searches, 2017-2026).
Count
CLO-titled hires are inside the 38. No CLO-only count is published.
Proof
38 GC/CLO of 230+ in-house placements; 96% offer acceptance; 97% still in post at 12 months; 91% at 24 months.
Terms
Retained only. Fee 25-30% of total first-year compensation, 30% of the fee as retainer, 12-month replacement.
File
NASDAQ-listed medtech, Boston: shortlist of four on day 24; accepted offer week 11; 12-month checkpoint held.
02 CLO versus GC

Same 38-search book. A different scorecard, and often a different title.

Copying a general counsel job description, or filtering on the words chief legal officer, is how a nomination committee misses the person who already does the job.

I

The reporting line is the seat

In the ACC 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey key findings, published January 29, 2026, 84 percent of 1,049 chief legal officers report directly to the chief executive. A legal officer who reports through the CFO or the COO is not this hire. The line is locked in week 1, in writing, before a name is called.

II

The title is used by a minority

The same key findings put use of the chief legal officer title at up to 34 percent. Most people who hold the seat still sign as general counsel. A search that insists on the CLO title in the current employer keeps only that share and drops general counsel of larger peers who already sit with a board.

III

Enterprise risk is in the job, or it is split on purpose

Majority oversight of compliance sat with 64 percent of those CLOs, and majority oversight of the corporate secretary function with 62 percent. If this company wants both books inside the CLO seat, the scorecard says so. If compliance must report to the audit committee, that is a separate chief compliance officer search, not a sentence buried in the CLO brief.

IV

M&A is a growth question, not a litigation question

Barriers to growth and expansion were cited by 20 percent, against 4 percent for litigation and 4 percent for data privacy. 74 percent of respondents provide proactive strategic counsel. The dossier has to show a transaction or an expansion the candidate owned, not a dispute they supervised after the fact.

A company hiring its first lawyer is not in this comparison. That brief is a first general counsel search. A venture-backed SaaS company in California hired its first general counsel on the same clock: shortlist on day 24, accepted offer in week 10, still in post at 24 months. That file is one of the 38. The person still owned commercial contracts and privacy. Copying that brief onto a listed company hires a builder and calls the seat a CLO.

A company replacing a sitting officer without the market knowing is a succession search. The NASDAQ-listed medtech in Boston is that file: four names on day 24, accepted offer in week 11, 12-month checkpoint held. Use the succession search when the incumbent is still in the chair. A chief legal officer search is the brief when the nomination committee has defined a C-suite seat — chief executive report, board attendance, enterprise risk, M&A — whether the offer letter says chief legal officer or general counsel. Parent mandate: in-house and general counsel recruiting. What companies test in a new general counsel, before the title is chosen, is in what companies look for in a new general counsel.

03 Candidate pool

Three pools. None of them is an advertised CLO list.

We do not publish how many of the 38 GC and CLO hires came from each pool. The map is the work. The scorecard decides who stays on it.

A

Sitting chief legal officers

Already report to a chief executive and already attend a board. The constraint is conflict and off-limits, not discovery. We do not recruit from a client's own legal department for 24 months after a mandate, and we do not approach a lawyer we placed for as long as that lawyer stays. A sitting CLO at a direct competitor is often off the list for that reason, not because the person is unknown.

B

General counsel of larger peers

They do the CLO job under the older title. The ACC 2026 key findings put the CLO title at up to 34 percent, so the general-counsel pool is the larger one. The test is scale: a general counsel who has run the secretary book, the compliance oversight, and a transaction at a company the nomination committee respects. A general counsel who is still the only lawyer in the building is a different search.

C

Law-firm vice chairs

Vice chairs and senior partners who have been the outside lawyer in the boardroom are mapped. They are not preferred. Advisory attendance at a board meeting is not the same as owning the pack, the budget, and the decision to tell the chief executive no. The dossier has to show they have employed lawyers and run a function. If it cannot, the name does not go forward. No placement rate from this pool is published.

A law-firm vice chair is assessed on four facts, none of which is the firm's letterhead. Has this person hired and removed lawyers, or only staffed a client team? Has this person owned a department budget, or only billed one? Has this person stopped a transaction, in writing, to a chief executive who could overrule them? Was the last board meeting attended as an officer of the company, or as an advisor on someone else's slide? A yes on the fourth question and a no on the first three is a counsel relationship, not a CLO. The name can stay in the map. It does not go on the shortlist.

Mapping uses the firm market map of 1,480,000+ lawyers. How that map is maintained is on the research programme. Who listed companies have appointed, and from where, is on the General Counsel Appointments Tracker. The firm side of a move the other way — a sitting CLO who wants a partnership — is not this search. That brief is lateral partner recruiting.

04 Assessment

Six lines locked in week 1. Outreach does not start without them.

The assessment is whether this person has already held the C-suite seat, not whether the CV uses the right noun.

  1. 01
    Reporting line. Chief executive, not the finance function. The ACC 2026 key findings: 84 percent of chief legal officers report to the chief executive. A dotted line to the chair of the audit committee is recorded where compliance stays with legal. A candidate who has only ever reported to a general counsel is a deputy, and that search is a deputy general counsel search.
  2. 02
    Board access. In those key findings, 79 percent of chief legal officers almost always attend board meetings. The dossier names the committees and the last matter the candidate took into the room. "Exposed to the board" is not a pass.
  3. 03
    Enterprise risk, including the secretary book. Majority oversight of compliance, 64 percent. Majority oversight of the corporate secretary function, 62 percent. If this company splits the secretary seat, the CLO scorecard says what is left, and the secretary hire is a corporate secretary search. If compliance is independent, it is a chief compliance officer search.
  4. 04
    M&A and expansion. Barriers to growth and expansion, 20 percent, against litigation and data privacy at 4 percent each. The file names a transaction, a carve-out, or a market entry. A litigation docket does not substitute.
  5. 05
    Cash, bonus, and long-term incentive the committee will pass. Base, target bonus, and the long-term grant are agreed with the compensation committee before outreach. The figures below are the market structure. We do not open a search on a base salary the committee has not seen beside the incentive.
  6. 06
    Off-limits and conflicts. No approach to a lawyer we placed, for as long as that lawyer stays. No recruiting from the client's legal department for 24 months after the mandate. Both sit in the engagement letter with the fee.
05 Timeline

Plan 90 to 120 days against an 8-to-16-week clock. Do not invent a third clock.

Nomination committees often block 90 to 120 days. That block is a calendar. It is not a Sartori median. On the 38 GC and CLO searches since 2017, time to shortlist is 24 days and time to accepted offer is 11 weeks at the median, range 8 to 16 weeks. Eight weeks is 56 days. Eleven weeks is 77 days. Sixteen weeks is 112 days. Ninety days is just under 13 weeks, inside the range. One hundred and twenty days is just over 17 weeks, eight days past the published ceiling of 112 days to an accepted offer.

If day 120 is the day the officer must be in the room, acceptance has to land near week 11, not at week 16. Week 16 uses 112 of the 120 days before notice even starts. Notice is negotiated in offer engineering. No median notice period is published on these 38 files. A board that treats 120 days as a guaranteed start date is reading a planning window as a measured result.

The other slip is the committee calendar. The shortlist is due on day 24 so that it can be put in front of a meeting that already exists. If the nomination committee's next sitting is after week 11, the search does not get faster to fill the gap, and it does not get a new median. Interviews wait for that sitting. An offer dated after the sitting can fall past both the 11-week median and a 120-day hope without anyone having run a slow process. Date the Mandate Blueprint backward from the meeting, not forward from the day the board decided it was "time for a CLO."

  1. Week 1 Mandate Blueprint

    Reporting line, board access, risk and M&A scope, cash, bonus, long-term incentive, conflicts, off-limits. Written. No calls before this exists.

  2. Weeks 1-2 Total-market mapping

    Sitting CLOs, general counsel of larger peers, law-firm vice chairs. Mapped against 1,480,000+ lawyers, then cut by the scorecard.

  3. Weeks 2-4 Private outreach

    Blind both ways until mutual interest. No CV leaves without written candidate consent. NDA on request.

  4. Day 24 Shortlist dossiers

    Time to shortlist on the 38 GC and CLO searches is 24 days. The Boston medtech file delivered four names on that day. Each name had to be able to sit with the board.

  5. Weeks 5-11 Board interviews and offer

    Chief executive, chair, nomination committee. Board references. Median accepted offer at week 11. Range 8-16 weeks, which is 56-112 days.

  6. After start 90-day checks

    Did the officer attend the board, and did the first risk or M&A item travel on the CEO line? Replacement term: 12 months. Retention of placed in-house leaders: 97 percent at 12 months, 91 percent at 24 months.

Work that cannot wait 11 weeks is not a reason to shorten this search. Interim cover is a separate book: 60+ interim and fractional engagements, median 7 days from first call to start, counted outside the 230+. See interim legal talent. Process detail: how we run a search.

06 Compensation

Pay the seat the survey measured. Do not import a first-GC base.

Every dollar figure in this section is from the 2025 ACC and Empsight Law Department Compensation Survey executive summary, 1,632 U.S. in-house respondents, published September 16, 2025. None of it is a Sartori banding.

Chief legal officer and general counsel pay structure, 2025. ACC and Empsight Law Department Compensation Survey executive summary.
ItemFigureCut
Base salary, median$330,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Base salary, 90th percentile$506,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Short-term incentive eligible96%General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Short-term incentive target, median35%General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Short-term incentive amount, median$91,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Total cash, median$410,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Total cash, 90th percentile$764,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Long-term incentive eligible63%General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Long-term incentive target, median40%General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Long-term incentive target amount, median$134,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Long-term incentive target amount, 90th$1.02 millionGeneral Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Total target direct compensation, median$503,000General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Total target direct compensation, 90th$1.46 millionGeneral Counsel/Chief Legal Officer
Base salary, median$234,000General counsel, single lawyer
Total cash, median$255,000General counsel, single lawyer
Total target direct compensation, median$280,000General counsel, single lawyer
Base salary, above $5 billion vs under $1 billion revenue44% higherChief legal officers
Total target compensation, same revenue cut173% higher; above $5 billion the median exceeds $1 millionChief legal officers

Do not offer the 90th percentile as if it were the median, and do not offer the single-lawyer median to a listed CLO. The retained fee is 25-30 percent of total first-year compensation. A retainer of 30 percent of the fee is paid at engagement. Total first-year compensation is defined in the engagement letter against the base, target bonus, and long-term incentive the committee has cleared.

Source: Association of Corporate Counsel and Empsight International, 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey executive summary, 1,632 respondents, published September 16, 2025.

The single-lawyer general counsel in that survey — median base $234,000, median total target direct compensation $280,000 — is the structural contrast with a CLO seat, not a discount the board should apply. Proxy-disclosed pay for named executive officers is a different instrument, read on General Counsel Pay at the largest U.S.-listed companies. Stage bands below the listed seat: general counsel salary 2026.

07 Board references

A reference is a director who has sat in the room with the candidate.

The nomination committee is not hiring a drafter. The reference has to be someone who has watched the candidate brief a board.

On a chief legal officer search the reference list is set in the Mandate Blueprint, with the scorecard. A usable reference is a director, a committee chair, or a chief executive who has been in the meeting when the candidate presented risk, a transaction, or a disclosure. A law-firm partner who liked the work product is a colleague reference. It does not answer the board's question.

The published board-level file inside the 38 is a successor general counsel, not a separately counted CLO title. A NASDAQ-listed medtech in Boston ran a blind search. The shortlist was four dossiers on day 24. The accepted offer closed in week 11. The 12-month retention checkpoint held. The general counsel's account of that shortlist: every name could already sit with the board. That is the reference standard this search uses. The reference list is the one written into the Mandate Blueprint. It is not a standing quota of calls.

The same file is why confidentiality is part of referencing, not a courtesy. The incumbent was still in post. References were taken without shopping that person. Blind both ways until mutual interest is confirmed in writing. No curriculum vitae leaves us without written consent. An NDA is available on request. The method is on how we run a search, and the file is the Boston medtech succession.

A reference call on this seat has a script that fits on one page. Did the candidate present to the board, or sit in and answer when asked? Who else was in the room? What did the candidate recommend on the transaction or the risk item, and did the board take it? What happened the one time the candidate and the chief executive disagreed? A director who cannot answer those four questions has not seen the work. Thank them, and do not score the call as a pass. The dossier that goes to the nomination committee records the answers, the role of the person who gave them, and the matter they were describing. It does not record a rating.

Final interviews follow the same cut. The chief executive, the chair, and at least one member of the nomination committee meet the shortlist. A process that stops with the chief people officer has assessed a colleague, not an officer. The Boston file put four names in front of the board. That is the shape: a short list the directors will actually meet, not a long list for a staff screen. Offer engineering then covers notice, the long-term incentive the compensation committee has already cleared, and the 12-month replacement term. The terms are in the engagement letter before the first reference is taken.

08 Proof

38 GC and CLO searches. The Boston file is the board-level one we can show.

38
GC and CLO placements.Of 230+ in-house placements since 2017. No CLO-only split is published.
Sartori & Partners
24 days
Time to shortlist.GC and CLO searches, n=38.
Sartori & Partners
11 wk
Median to accepted offer.Range 8-16 weeks (56-112 days).
Sartori & Partners
96%
Offer acceptance.Corporate mandates. 92% of retained corporate mandates complete.
Sartori & Partners

Case

Successor general counsel, NASDAQ-listed medtech, Boston

Medtech · NASDAQ-listed · Boston

Successor general counsel, inside the 38 GC/CLO searchesRead the case study

Situation
The sitting general counsel was still in post. The board needed a successor who could sit with directors, without a leaked process.
Approach
Blind retained search. Scorecard locked before outreach. Shortlist limited to people who could already sit with the board.
Outcome
Shortlist of four on day 24. Accepted offer in week 11. The 12-month retention checkpoint held.

Timeline: Day 24 shortlist; week 11 accepted offer. One of 38 GC/CLO searches since 2017.

Client reference

What the buyer said

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.

General Counsel NASDAQ-listed medtech · Boston

The quote is the published reference on that file. "Just over three weeks" matches the 24-day shortlist. "Two years later" matches the published 24-month retention checkpoint on placed in-house leaders, which is 91 percent, and the file's own 12-month checkpoint, which held. It is not a CLO-titled placement counted apart from the 38.

09 Related

Read beside this search.

In-house and GC recruiting

Parent mandate: CLO, successor GC, first GC, deputy, specialists.

Parent service

GC succession

The confidential replacement while the sitting counsel remains. Same 38-search clock.

Succession search

First general counsel

When there is no legal officer yet. A builder, not a C-suite CLO template.

First GC search

Deputy general counsel

The second chair. Not the officer who reports to the chief executive.

Deputy GC search

Corporate secretary

When the secretary book is split out of the CLO seat.

Secretary search

How to run a GC search

The operating guide for the blueprint, the map, and the offer.

Read the guide

Chief legal officer search — questions

How does a chief legal officer search differ from a general counsel search?

A chief legal officer search hires a C-suite seat: the officer reports to the chief executive, attends the board, and holds enterprise risk and M&A. A first general counsel search hires the company's first lawyer, who still does the contracts. A general counsel succession search replaces a sitting counsel in confidence. All three sit in the same published book: 38 General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer searches since 2017. There is no separate published count of CLO-titled placements. In the Association of Corporate Counsel's 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey key findings (1,049 participants), use of the chief legal officer title is up to 34 percent, and 84 percent report to the chief executive.

Who is in the candidate pool for a CLO executive search?

Three groups, mapped rather than posted. Sitting chief legal officers. General counsel of larger peers who already report to a chief executive and attend a board, many of whom do not use the CLO title. Use of that title is up to 34 percent in the ACC 2026 key findings. Law-firm vice chairs and senior partners who have advised a board but have not run a department. Outreach runs against a market map of 1,480,000+ lawyers. We do not publish a split of the 38 searches by which pool produced the hire.

How long does a chief legal officer search take?

On 38 GC and CLO searches since 2017, the shortlist arrived in 24 days and the median accepted offer in 11 weeks, range 8 to 16 weeks. That is 56 days, 77 days and 112 days. A 90-day mark falls inside the range, just under 13 weeks. A 120-day mark is eight days past 112, so it is not a published time-to-offer. If day 120 is a start date, acceptance has to land near the 11-week median so notice still fits. The published file: a NASDAQ-listed medtech in Boston, shortlist of four on day 24, accepted offer in week 11. See how a search runs.

What should a board budget for chief legal officer compensation?

Use the 2025 ACC and Empsight Law Department Compensation Survey executive summary (1,632 U.S. respondents, published September 16, 2025), not a first-GC cash band. For the General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer title, median base was $330,000, median total cash $410,000, and median total target direct compensation $503,000. The 90th percentile of total target direct compensation was $1.46 million. Chief legal officers at companies above $5 billion of revenue earn 44 percent more in base and 173 percent more in total target compensation than those under $1 billion, and the large-company median exceeds $1 million. The retained fee is 25-30 percent of total first-year compensation, with 30 percent of the fee paid at engagement.

How do board references work on a CLO search?

A board reference is a director or committee chair who has sat with the candidate in a board or committee meeting. It is not a law-firm partner commenting on drafting. On the NASDAQ-listed medtech succession in Boston, the shortlist was four dossiers, and each name could already sit with the board. The accepted offer closed in week 11. We do not publish a standard number of references per search. The reference set is fixed in the Mandate Blueprint in week 1, before outreach.

Are chief legal officer searches retained only?

Yes. GC, CLO and CCO searches run retained. The fee is 25-30 percent of total first-year compensation. A retainer of 30 percent of the fee is paid at engagement. The replacement term is 12 months. We do not recruit from a client's legal department for 24 months after a mandate, and we do not approach lawyers we placed for as long as they stay with that employer. Retained corporate mandates complete at 92 percent. Fee, replacement window and off-limits are in the letter before anyone is called.

What if the company needs a general counsel, not a chief legal officer?

Then this is the wrong brief. No incumbent and a function still to build: first general counsel search. A sitting counsel to be replaced in confidence: general counsel succession. A second chair: deputy general counsel. Compliance that must report to the audit committee rather than through the legal officer: chief compliance officer search. The parent desk is in-house and general counsel recruiting.

Sources

Clean external sources cited on this page.

Sources

5 references
  1. ACC 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey — key findings (PDF) acc.com ↗
  2. ACC 2026 Chief Legal Officers Survey — published January 29, 2026 acc.com ↗
  3. ACC and Empsight, 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey — executive summary (PDF) acc.com ↗
  4. ACC 2025 Law Department Compensation Survey — published September 16, 2025 acc.com ↗
  5. Sartori & Partners research programme sartoriglobal.com ↗

Chief legal officer

Brief the CLO search before the nomination committee copies a general counsel description.

Retained. Fee, replacement window and off-limits in the letter before we call anyone. No obligation.

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