The Association of Corporate Counsel’s “2023 Chief Legal Officers Survey” (conducted in partnership with Exterro) revealed noteworthy benchmarking data on the Chief Legal Officer’s (CLO) roles and exposure to the board. The report is based on a late 2022 survey of nearly 900 CLOs across industries and company sizes worldwide.
Among the key takeaways:
- Corporate Secretary role—Generally on par with last year’s survey, a majority of respondents (55%) also serve as Corporate Secretary. Another 6% said that the Corporate Secretary reports to them directly.
- Direct reporting relationship—As to US company respondents specifically, 81% of CLOs report directly to the CEO (or equivalent), which is down from 84% in last year’s survey, but considerably higher than the percentage with a direct reporting relationship to the CEO at non-US companies. Among respondents overall, CLOs who do not report directly to the CEO (or equivalent) most commonly report to the CFO.
- Board exposure/engagement—The vast majority of US company respondents (87% of companies with at least $1B in revenue)) say they regularly attend the board meetings, while 34% of such respondents say they meet with the board or its committees in executive session, and 20% report having business meetings or calls with the board or its committees outside of executive session. These practices are less prevalent in smaller US companies (less than $100M revenue).
- Responsibilities—In addition to the Legal function, a majority of all respondents are responsible for the Compliance and Privacy functions (i.e., those two functions report to the CLO). Notably, 23% are responsible for ESG/CSR and 20% are responsible for the company’s cybersecurity response function.