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Contents
Key Takeaways for a General Counsel Resume
Why This General Counsel Resume Works
How to Write a General Counsel Resume
What to Include in a General Counsel Resume
General Counsel Resume Summary Examples
General Counsel Work Experience Examples
Top General Counsel Skills
Key Certifications & Licences for a General Counsel
General Counsel Salary Expectations
Common General Counsel Resume Mistakes
General Counsel Resume FAQs
Summary
General counsel with sixteen years in corporate law, the last six leading the legal function of a technology group in Lagos. The company's most senior legal mind and a trusted advisor to the CEO and board, balancing the protection of the business against the commercial need to move and grow. Built the in-house legal function from scratch, took the company through a major funding round, and kept it ahead of fast-changing regulation. Advises the board, manages litigation and risk, negotiates major contracts and deals, and oversees compliance and governance. Commercially minded, calm under pressure and trusted completely. Looking for a general-counsel or chief-legal-officer role with a company that wants legal as a genuine business partner.
Work Experience
General Counsel
Sahara Technology Group, Lagos, Nigeria
Jan 2017 – Present
- Lead the legal function as the company's most senior legal mind, balancing protecting the business against the need to grow.
- Built the in-house legal function from scratch and took the company through a major funding round as lead legal advisor.
- Advise the CEO and board on strategy, risk and governance, giving clear legal judgement that supports confident decisions.
- Negotiate major contracts, partnerships and deals, protecting the company's interests while keeping commercial momentum.
- Manage litigation, regulatory matters and risk, keeping the company ahead of fast-changing technology regulation.
- Oversee compliance and governance across the group, embedding the structures a growing company needs to scale safely.
Senior Legal Counsel
West Africa Corporate Partners, Lagos, Nigeria
Aug 2008 – Dec 2016
- Advised corporate clients on contracts, M&A and regulation, handling complex commercial matters across industries.
- Negotiated deals and managed disputes and risk, building deep corporate and commercial legal expertise.
- Learned corporate law, negotiation and risk management on the job across more than eight years.
- Built the track record that led into a general-counsel role leading a technology group's legal function.
Education
LLM in Corporate Law, Corporate Law
London School of Economics
Sep 2006 – Sep 2007
- Master of laws specialising in corporate and commercial law. The programme deepened expertise in the deals, governance and risk a general counsel handles. It supported a career in senior corporate legal roles.
LLB (Bachelor of Laws), Law
University of Lagos
Sep 2001 – Jun 2005
- Bachelor of laws covering the full legal curriculum, followed by call to the Nigerian Bar. The degree and qualification built the foundation for a legal career. It led into corporate legal practice.
Funding Round & Legal Build
Funding Round & Legal Build
Jan 2020 – Jun 2021
- Built the company's in-house legal function and led the legal workstream of a major funding round, from due diligence to deal documentation, which closed successfully and left the company with the legal structures to scale.
Highlights
Built the legal function
- Built the in-house legal function from scratch and took the company through a major funding round. Standing up a legal function and steering a fundraise is exactly the high-stakes work a general counsel is hired for.
Protects and enables
- Balances protecting the business against the commercial need to move and grow, rather than just saying no. The best general counsel are business partners who find the path to yes, not just guardians of risk.
Admission
Barrister & Solicitor (Nigerian Bar)
Nigerian Bar Association
Jan 2006 – Present
- Admitted to the Nigerian Bar as a barrister and solicitor, with an LLM in corporate law, covering the full scope of corporate legal practice. It is the credential authorising legal practice and underpins all advice given to the board.
Languages
- English (UK) — Native or Bilingual Proficiency
- Igbo — Native or Bilingual Proficiency
- French — Limited Working Proficiency
Technical Skills
- Corporate & Commercial Law
- Board Advisory
- Contract Negotiation
- M&A and Fundraising
- Litigation Management
- Regulatory & Compliance
- Corporate Governance
- Risk Management
- Legal Team Leadership
- Commercial Judgement
Personal Skills
- Judgement
- Composure
- Integrity
- Commercial Awareness
- Communication
Activities & Interests
- Holidays
- Photography
- Drinking
- Shopping
- Reading
Key Takeaways for a General Counsel Resume
Boards hire general counsel on judgement and commercial partnership, not on technical legal depth alone:
- Lead with your remit: which entities, jurisdictions and functions you cover, and who you report to on the leadership team.
- Show that you enable rather than only protect, since boards remove general counsel who become a brake on the business.
- Quantify the deals you led by value and type, because transaction scale is the clearest signal of the level you have operated at.
- Evidence board and governance work, as advising directors is a materially different skill from advising a commercial team.
- Give the size of the function you built or ran, including team headcount and external counsel spend you managed.
- Name the regulatory environment you navigated, since technology, financial services and healthcare carry very different exposure.
Why This General Counsel Resume Works
This sample belongs to a lawyer sixteen years qualified, six of them leading a technology group's legal function, and it is written commercially throughout.
- The opening positions the role as the company's most senior legal mind and a trusted advisor to the chief executive, which is the actual remit rather than a job description.
- It names the central tension of the job explicitly, protecting the business against the commercial need to move and grow, and that balance is what boards assess.
- Building the in-house legal function from scratch is the strongest single achievement, because it demonstrates institution-building rather than only advisory work.
- Leading the company through a major funding round evidences transaction capability at a level that private practice experience alone would not establish.
- Keeping ahead of fast-changing technology regulation shows anticipatory risk work rather than a reactive response to problems once they have arrived.
- The Nigerian Bar admission is given its own section, which matters because the right to practise underpins everything else the role involves.
How to Write a General Counsel Resume
You are applying for a leadership seat that happens to be legal. Write it the way a chief financial officer would write theirs.
State your remit in the first two lines
Entities and jurisdictions covered, revenue or headcount of the business, who you report to, and whether you sit on the executive committee. A board is establishing your scope before assessing anything else, and a technical opening line wastes that first read entirely.
Write commercially, not technically
Deals enabled, risk positions taken, growth supported, decisions unblocked. A general counsel who describes contract review and legal advice is describing a senior associate's job. The distinction that matters is whether the business moved faster because you were there.
Quantify transactions by value and type
Funding rounds, acquisitions, disposals, joint ventures and major commercial agreements, with deal values and your specific role. Transaction scale is the single clearest proxy for the level you have genuinely operated at, and boards read it that way immediately.
Evidence the board and governance side
Board papers authored, company secretarial duties, director training delivered, governance frameworks implemented. Advising directors on their duties is a distinct discipline from commercial advisory, and it is what separates a general counsel from a senior lawyer.
Show the function you built or ran
Lawyers and paralegals managed, external counsel panel and spend, legal operations tooling, and any cost saved by bringing work in-house. Institution-building is what a growing company is actually buying when it appoints its first general counsel.
Name your regulatory terrain
Data protection, financial conduct, competition, employment, sanctions, sector-specific regimes. Regulatory exposure differs enormously between industries, and a board wants to know you have navigated something resembling their environment before.
General counsel searches are usually run by executive recruiters working from a shortlist of four or five, so scope has to be legible immediately. You can build an executive legal resume free and keep your remit near the top.
What to Include in a General Counsel Resume
Beyond the standard sections, a board or executive recruiter is checking these:
A remit line per role covering entities, jurisdictions, business size and your reporting line into the executive.
Transaction record with deal values, types and your role, distinguishing deals you led from those you supported.
Governance responsibilities including board advisory, company secretarial duties and any regulatory accountability held.
Function scale covering team size, external counsel spend managed, and legal operations or tooling you introduced.
Admission and jurisdiction with standing, since the right to practise underpins the whole appointment.
Sector and regulatory environment, which determines how transferable your risk judgement will be to a different industry.
Extra tips
Write "closed a funding round to timetable" rather than "advised on investment documentation".
Boards appoint general counsel who make things happen, and the verb you choose signals which kind you are.
General Counsel Resume Summary Examples
Two summaries at different levels of seniority, both leading with remit rather than with legal specialism:
Entry-level resume summary example
Senior legal counsel with nine years qualified, currently the sole in-house lawyer for a software business of around two hundred staff, reporting directly to the chief financial officer. Owns all commercial contracting including customer agreements, supplier terms and partner arrangements, taking roughly a hundred and forty contracts a year from first draft through to signature without external support. Built the company's contract templates and playbook, which reduced average turnaround on standard customer agreements from eleven days to three and removed most routine legal work from the queue. Manages data protection compliance and a small external counsel panel for specialist matters. Admitted and in good standing, and looking for a first general counsel appointment with a growing technology business.
Senior-level resume summary example
General counsel with sixteen years qualified, the last six leading legal for a technology group across three jurisdictions and reporting to the chief executive as a member of the executive committee. Built the in-house legal function from a standing start to a team of five lawyers and two paralegals, cutting annual external counsel spend by roughly forty percent while bringing the majority of commercial work in-house. Acted as lead legal advisor on a major funding round alongside two acquisitions, and negotiates the group's largest commercial partnerships directly with counterparty principals. Advises the board on governance, director duties and regulatory exposure across a fast-moving technology regime. Seeking a general counsel or chief legal officer appointment.
General Counsel Work Experience Examples
Three sets covering what a board actually assesses, since deal work, governance and function-building carry different weight.
Transactions and commercial deals
- Acted as lead legal advisor on a major funding round, running due diligence, negotiating the investment documents and coordinating external counsel through to a completion that held to the agreed timetable.
- Led the legal workstream on two acquisitions including diligence, share purchase agreements and post-completion integration, identifying two liabilities that were subsequently reflected in the purchase price.
- Negotiated the group's largest commercial partnerships directly with counterparty principals rather than through external counsel, which protected margin while keeping the commercial relationship intact.
- Built contract templates and a negotiation playbook covering the company's standard positions, reducing average turnaround on customer agreements from eleven days down to three across the first year.
- Set and held the group's risk positions in negotiation, deciding which points were genuinely worth conceding so that commercial teams could close without escalating every clause upward.
Board, governance and risk
- Advised the chief executive and board on strategy, risk appetite and governance, presenting written board papers each quarter and attending as a member of the executive committee throughout.
- Implemented a governance framework covering delegated authorities, conflicts and board reporting, which gave directors a defensible record of how each significant decision had been reached.
- Delivered director duties training to the board and senior leadership, so that decisions were taken with an understanding of personal exposure rather than assuming the company carried all of it.
- Managed the group's regulatory exposure across a fast-changing technology regime, anticipating two significant regulatory changes early enough for the product roadmap to absorb them.
- Oversaw litigation and disputes end to end, settling three matters before proceedings were issued and preserving commercial relationships that a contested claim would have destroyed.
Building and running the legal function
- Built the in-house legal function from a standing start to a team of five lawyers and two paralegals, defining the structure, hiring every member and setting the standards the function worked to.
- Cut annual external counsel spend by roughly forty percent by bringing routine commercial work in-house and consolidating specialist instructions onto a smaller and better negotiated panel.
- Introduced contract lifecycle tooling and a self-service process for low-risk agreements, which removed a substantial volume of routine work from the legal queue without increasing risk.
- Established a legal service model with clear escalation thresholds, so that commercial teams knew what they could sign themselves and what genuinely needed legal review before signature.
- Developed two junior lawyers into independent commercial leads, structuring their exposure to negotiation and board work so that the function could operate when the general counsel was unavailable.
Top General Counsel Skills
What a board assesses in a general counsel, weighted toward judgement and commercial partnership over technical depth:
Hard skills
- Corporate & Commercial Law
- Board Advisory & Governance
- Contract Negotiation
- M&A and Fundraising
- Regulatory Compliance
- Data Protection & Privacy
- Litigation & Dispute Management
- Risk Management
- External Counsel & Panel Management
- Company Secretarial
- Employment Law
- Intellectual Property
- Legal Operations & Tooling
- Legal Budget Management
- Policy & Framework Design
- Competition Law
- Director Duties Training
Soft skills:
- Commercial Judgment
- Composure Under Pressure
- Integrity
- Influence at Board Level
- Pragmatism
- Clear Advice to Non-Lawyers
Key Certifications & Licences for a General Counsel
Admission is the foundation, and the additions below matter more than further legal specialisation at this level:
-
Admission to Practise
— The relevant bar association, law society or regulator Required, and jurisdiction-bound. State the jurisdiction, year and standing, and name any additional jurisdictions you are admitted in, since multinational groups value that directly.
-
Company Secretarial or Governance Qualification
— The Chartered Governance Institute or equivalent Genuinely useful because many general counsel also carry the company secretary role, and formal governance training distinguishes you from a purely commercial lawyer.
-
Data Protection Certification
— IAPP or an equivalent recognised body Increasingly expected where the general counsel also owns privacy, particularly in technology businesses handling personal data across multiple jurisdictions.
-
Executive or Business Education
— A business school or executive programme Optional and helpful when moving from private practice into a leadership seat, since it signals commercial breadth that a purely legal career does not by itself demonstrate.
General Counsel Salary Expectations
General counsel pay sits well above the general legal median, and equity is typically a significant component in growth companies:
USD 160,000 – USD 450,000 · Lawyers, national median (general counsel sits above) · US
The national median for lawyers overall is around $159,670. General counsel appointments sit at or well above the top of that range, usually with bonus and equity attached.
Common General Counsel Resume Mistakes
These make an experienced in-house lawyer read as a senior associate, which costs the appointment:
- Writing technically about legal work rather than commercially about business outcomes, which is the clearest signal of someone not yet operating at this level.
- Leaving the remit unstated, so a board cannot tell whether you covered one entity or a group across several jurisdictions and regulatory regimes.
- Omitting deal values entirely, when transaction scale is the most reliable proxy a recruiter has for the seniority you have genuinely held.
- Presenting yourself only as a risk gatekeeper, when boards specifically remove general counsel who slow the business down rather than enabling it.
- Ignoring the function you built, including team size and external counsel spend, which is what a growing company is actually buying.
- Leaving governance and board advisory work implicit, when advising directors is precisely the distinction between general counsel and senior counsel.
General Counsel Resume FAQs
The questions senior in-house lawyers most often search when moving toward this seat, answered directly:
Lead with your remit covering entities, jurisdictions and reporting line, then transaction record with deal values. Follow with board and governance work, the size of the legal function you ran, and the regulatory environment you operated in, since that determines transferability.
A senior lawyer resume evidences technical depth and matter complexity. A general counsel resume evidences commercial judgement, board advisory, function-building and risk ownership. The work overlaps; the framing does not, and boards notice immediately when the framing is wrong.
Point at what the business could do because of you: deals closed on time, contract turnaround reduced, work brought in-house at a stated saving, regulatory changes absorbed without disrupting the roadmap. Legal value is easiest to prove through business velocity.
Reframe matters as business outcomes and lead with any secondment or in-house exposure you have. Emphasise breadth over depth, since in-house work spans commercial, employment, data and disputes, and show that you can give decisive advice rather than balanced options.
Yes, since it evidences budget ownership and commercial discipline. Give the spend you managed and any reduction you achieved by bringing work in-house or renegotiating the panel, which is one of the most concrete financial contributions the role makes.
Two pages. Keep remit, transactions and governance in the first half, then compress earlier private practice roles to a line or two each. Executive recruiters read quickly and rarely go past the second page, so everything decisive belongs before that point.
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