Barriers to the CEO role
Despite their strategic insights and legal expertise, in-house lawyers face distinct challenges when aiming for CEO. Our data highlights the most significant barriers holding legal professionals back – and what it might take to overcome them.
Lack of financial and operational experience
One of the biggest hurdles for in-house lawyers hoping to become CEO is the lack of experience in finance and operations. Many respondents noted that these areas are often unfamiliar to them, with one saying they, like many lawyers, are simply, “more about words than numbers.” In other cases, the willingness is there, yet participants put it down to a lack of exposure to business finances. Without this experience, many feel that their path to CEO is blocked.
Few visible paths from GC to CEO
A barrier that came up frequently in the data is that there’s little visibility of a career journey from in-house lawyer to CEO.
The results to "If you aspired to become a CEO, do you think the key skills would be mostly internal (e.g. skill gaps) or external (e.g. organisational bias)?" were pretty evenly split.
“I’d like to see General Counsel being mentored more by senior business leaders and given the space to think about how they want to drive their careers forward. Finishing your career as a GC is amazing. But the issue is, most lawyers love being lawyers. What’s interesting is that when they do move into the business on secondment, I’d say eight out of ten end up coming back to legal."
- Karen Glass, Director, Head of UK and Co-Head of International - In-House Practice, Legal & Compliance at Marsden
The results to "Do you think you're seen as a strategic partner, or as a risk manager?" were also evenly split.
The ‘risk manager’ perception
Another challenge is how lawyers are perceived. Fairly or not, in-house counsel are often seen as risk-averse and reactive – "the person who says no" or, “the fun police” – rather than forward-thinking business enablers. Changing this narrative means actively stepping into strategic conversations and demonstrating a clear focus on growth, not just compliance.
Karen Kerrigan, COO at Moneybox, explained that for many lawyers, this perception may be true. She said, “I do think being legally trained gives you huge advantages – your attention to detail, your standard for quality, your sense of responsibility. The dark side, though, is that it comes with shackles. Those shackles show up in your tolerance and approach to risk. I think sometimes lawyers can fail to see the wood for the trees when they’re identifying a risk – without stepping back and looking at what the business is actually trying to do.”