A provocative headline recently topped a CorpCounsel.com story: “Should GCs Be on the Board? GCs Say Yes.”

This former GC says “no.”

In fact, the story presented a much more modest and qualified account of that issue in describing “The General Counsel Excellence Report 2013,” prepared by the news site Global Legal Post, in association with legal referral network TerraLex and based on a survey of 270 chief legal officers globally.

Only 9 percent of the GCs surveyed were on their companies’ boards, and only 20 percent thought that GCs should be on the board. Those 20 percent, in my view, are wrong—and it is a mistake for a trend to develop among general counsel to aspire to membership on their company’s board.

As this site’s readers know well, the GC represents the company, not the CEO. The representative of the owners of the company—who protect both shareholder and stakeholder interests—is, of course, the board of directors. So, the directors are the day-to-day representatives of the company, not management, and thus the ultimate client of the GC.

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