Corporate · Second chair
The second chair runs the department when the GC is in the boardroom. A specialist with a larger title is a different hire.
Deputy general counsel, Head of Legal, Associate General Counsel: three labels for two jobs. One job is the second chair — the lawyer who covers the GC, runs the team, owns a slice of the secretary book, and can take the CEO when the GC is on a deal. The other is a specialist — privacy, employment, M&A, commercial — who should not be asked to run the department. We lock which job you are buying in week 1. Mixing them produces a shortlist that looks senior and cannot sit in the chair.
Since 2017 we have completed 47 Deputy GC and Head of Legal placements, inside 230+ in-house and corporate placements. The deputy clock is 21 days to shortlist and 10 weeks median to accepted offer. Cash band for Deputy GC / Head of Legal: $220,000-$380,000 base. Offer acceptance on corporate mandates is 96 percent. Most deputy seats carry a 6-month replacement term; Head of Legal retained on GC terms takes 12 months.
Second chair
Runs people. Owns a cut of the secretary book. Can take the regulator when the GC is in the boardroom. Has already managed counsel, not only a docket. On a PE-backed industrial, has run a carve-out or a public-company cadence.
Specialist
Owns privacy, employment, commercial, M&A or disputes at depth. Should not be asked to run the department. Those 96 senior and specialist in-house placements sit on the specialist clock: 18 days to shortlist, 8 weeks to offer. Different product.
If the next hire is actually the first lawyer in the company, stop. That is first general counsel search. If the GC is leaving, the deputy is a candidate on a succession search, not a default.
They treated succession as a confidentiality problem first. Our sitting GC was not shopped. The deputy we appointed had already run a carve-out.
The GC still sits on the interviews. The board usually does not, until the field is two.
| Seat | n | Shortlist | Median offer | Range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GC / CLO | 38 | 24 days | 11 weeks | 8-16 weeks |
| Deputy GC / Head of Legal | 47 | 21 days | 10 weeks | inside 8-16 |
| Senior / specialist counsel | 96 | 18 days | 8 weeks | specialist clock |
| CCO / compliance leadership | 41 | 21 days | 10 weeks | CCO clock |
Houston PE-backed industrial deputy: shortlist 18 days, offer week 8 — inside the deputy clock, on the fast edge.
Source: Sartori & Partners FACTS ledger, 10 September 2026.
What the deputy owns when the GC is in the boardroom, on leave, or on a deal. If the answer is 'commercial', you may want a specialist.
How many lawyers report in, and whether the deputy hires them. A Head of Legal in a PE portco of 3-6 lawyers is a player-coach. A listed deputy over 12-18 is a manager.
PE holdco reporting, a TSA, a listing, a consent decree, a carve-out. Name it. The Houston industrial deputy was hired for carve-out then public-company cadence.
$220,000-$380,000 base is the 2026 band we brief against. Equity follows the GC plan, not a partner-track ghost.
Sequencing the bench around the deputy: building in-house legal teams. Houston market: in-house counsel recruiting in Houston, Dallas, Austin.
Who they stood in for, for how long, and what broke. References who can speak to the month the GC was out, not to a deal they staffed.
Carve-out, listing, TSA, consent decree, holdco pack. If the résumé says 'strategic business partner' and names none of these, it is not a second-chair résumé.
Hired whom, fired whom, what the team looks like now. A deputy who has never hired is a senior individual contributor.
Sitting second chairs are rarely advertised. We map them and approach in confidence. Method: how we run a search.
How we run a search. Company hub: legal hiring for companies.
Timeline: Shortlist 18 days; offer week 8.
Client references
They treated succession as a confidentiality problem first. Our sitting GC was not shopped. The deputy we appointed had already run a carve-out.
A deputy is the second chair who can run the department; a specialist owns one discipline at depth. Head of Legal is the same second-chair idea in a company that does not use GC titles. An Associate General Counsel can be either, which is why we lock the scorecard in week 1. Parent: in-house and general counsel recruiting.
We have completed 47 Deputy GC and Head of Legal placements since 2017, inside 230+ in-house placements. The other slices: 38 GC/CLO, 96 senior and specialist counsel, 41 compliance leadership, 12 legal operations. Repeat or referral: 68 percent of corporate mandates.
Deputy and Head of Legal searches shortlist in 21 days on average, with a median accepted offer in 10 weeks. That is inside the corporate average of 21 days to shortlist, and faster than the GC clock (24 days / 11 weeks). A PE-backed industrial deputy in Houston: shortlist 18 days, offer week 8. Read the Houston deputy mandate.
A PE-backed deputy must have run a carve-out or a public-company cadence, not only a practice group. Portfolio companies live on holdco reporting, TSA exits and a sponsor who wants the legal function exit-ready. Listed deputies live on disclosure, the secretary book and a slower board. We do not mix the two fields without saying so.
Head-of-Legal and deputy seats at this seniority run retained, with the fee fixed before outreach. Specialist counsel searches may run retained or exclusive contingency. Fee band for exclusive senior counsel is 22-28 percent of first-year cash, 6-month replacement. GC-term Head of Legal seats take the 28-33 percent / 12-month GC package.
Other in-house searches, including most deputy seats, carry a 6-month replacement term. Where we retain the seat as Head of Legal on GC terms, the replacement window is 12 months, written in the letter. Off-limits: we never recruit from a client's legal department for 24 months after a mandate.
Yes. Of 230+ in-house placements, 38 were GC or CLO seats and 47 were deputy or Head of Legal. A succession that tests the deputy as the internal candidate is a general counsel succession search. A company hiring its first legal leader is a first general counsel search.
Second chair
47 placements since 2017. 21 days to shortlist. Fee and off-limits in the letter before we call anyone.
