So, You Want a Seat at the Leadership Table?
There is a huge gap between being technically excellent at law and advising on strictly legal issues, to being a member of a leadership team and being genuinely useful in a room of non-lawyers. This gap is not one that you close by working harder at the same things that got you promoted in the first place. It is a different set of muscles entirely, and building them before you make the jump can make that transition a lot easier.
This becomes clear the moment a Senior Legal Counsel moves into a Head of Legal or General Counsel role and finds themselves sitting on the Senior Leadership Team for the first time, perhaps after a move to a new company, industry or city, advising across Legal, Compliance, Risk and (lots) more. Nobody hands you a manual for that transition, and most of what is needed only becomes apparent once you are already in the room.
From legal advisor to business strategist
The single biggest adjustment is realising that the job quietly changes from giving legal advice to being a team member shaping the direction of a business. The breadth can be daunting at first, but it often turns out to be exactly what makes the role enjoyable.
As a Senior Legal Counsel, the questions in front of you are usually "what law do I need to consider here" and "what are the risks?". As a member of the SLT, the question becomes "given everything we know as a team, what should this business actually do?". That second question requires you to hold commercial priorities, legal exposure and ethical questions in your head, alongside the practical realities of resourcing and timing, and to give a clear recommendation rather than flagging the issue and stepping back.
It may take you a while to stop hedging. Lawyers are trained to caveat, to present options rather than conclusions and to protect against being wrong. We are naturally cautious people. Around a leadership table, that instinct can read as an unwillingness to commit. Learning to say "here is what I think we should do, and here is why" on issues beyond legal ones can feel uncomfortable at first, but it is also the moment colleagues start treating you as a genuine business partner rather than a legal function attached to the business.
Skills to build now
If you are a Senior Legal Counsel with an eye on Head of Legal, General Counsel or a seat on the SLT, the temptation is to wait until the title changes before you start thinking and behaving differently. However, you can start building your skillset much earlier.
Commercial fluency is the obvious one, but think bigger than just learning about the business and sector you are in. Really get to know the different areas of the business and understand what their goals and worries are. Learn what keeps the leadership team awake at night and what the company's big opportunities are for the future. Sit in on commercial meetings you are not strictly required to attend, and ask questions you are genuinely curious about.
Second, if you are not already a generalist lawyer, take some steps to become one. Even something as simple as reading over your old LPC textbooks can help refresh your memory on areas outside your usual specialism, from Employment to Real Estate to Corporate and Commercial. Having a baseline level of knowledge across the board will be useful.
Finally, learn to read a room that is not made up of other lawyers. Legal training sharpens precision and caution, both genuinely valuable traits, but a leadership team moves at a different pace and speaks a different language. Watch how your future peers frame problems, how they push back on each other and how they make decisions under uncertainty. That fluency does not arrive automatically with a new job title. It is built through deliberate attention over time, and through getting to really know the different characters in the team.
It will still feel uncomfortable
Even with preparation, the first few months on a leadership team will probably feel like you are catching up. That is normal, and it is not a sign you were not ready. You are moving from being the expert in the room to being one voice among several, potentially stronger, ones, and that shift takes some getting used to regardless of how well prepared you were.
What can help is accepting that value on the SLT is often not going to be about knowing more law than anyone else in the room. It is about bringing other skills into a wider strategic conversation in a way the business could actually use, often using what feels more like common sense than anything else, but is likely judgment you’ve built up working across different projects, companies and departments over time.
Over to you..
Do not wait for the promotion to start building the skills that role will demand. Get to know other business areas really well. Understand opportunity and risk beyond your own function. Pay attention to how leadership conversations actually work, well before you are expected to hold your own in one.
Once that shift arrives, it will feel natural, but only if you have done the preparation in advance.