CLOs Share 3 Career Growth Tips for In-House Legal Professionals

Key takeaways:

• Pursue diverse professional and geographic experiences to build the breadth of knowledge required for C-suite legal leadership, as career progression to CLO requires curiosity that extends beyond pure legal expertise into business strategy, operations, and competitive dynamics.
• Demonstrate value by aligning legal work with company objectives and measuring business impact rather than just providing legal opinions, positioning yourself as a strategic partner who connects different parts of the organization and anticipates where legal knowledge can drive better business decisions.
• Embrace legal technology and automation tools to scale your impact without adding headcount, as understanding contract lifecycle management platforms and AI capabilities differentiates lawyers who advance from those who plateau at senior counsel levels.
• Lead through uncertainty by maintaining focus on priorities while showing empathy for team members experiencing economic challenges, remembering that you don’t have to solve everything at once and can take difficult periods one step at a time.

An in-house counsel career is a legal career path where attorneys work directly for a company rather than at a law firm, serving as internal advisors on legal matters affecting the business. The path to senior legal leadership has evolved significantly—it’s no longer a simple ladder from associate to partner.

Today’s in-house legal departments include diverse roles beyond traditional counsel positions. Legal operations specialists manage processes and technology. Chiefs of staff coordinate executive priorities. Chief legal officers (CLOs) oversee broader business functions than general counsel historically managed.

But here’s the thing: career progression in this environment doesn’t follow a single route. We recently spoke with three practicing CLOs, who shared their insights on building successful in-house careers with our Chief Community Officer, Mary O’Carroll. Their experiences reveal how legal professionals can advance by embracing new opportunities, demonstrating business value, and leading through uncertainty.

What the in-house counsel career path looks like

The in-house counsel career path is the progression attorneys follow when working directly for companies rather than law firms. This path includes defined role levels, strategic business responsibilities, and opportunities to reach executive leadership positions.

The typical progression: from counsel to CLO

Career advancement in corporate legal departments follows a recognizable pattern. Most in-house lawyers start as associate counsel or counsel after gaining experience at a law firm or government agency. From there, the typical progression moves through these levels:

• Counsel handles specific legal matters and supports more senior attorneys
• Senior counsel takes on greater responsibility for complex legal issues and may supervise junior lawyers
• Assistant or deputy general counsel oversees practice areas or business units
• General counsel (GC) leads the legal department and reports to executive leadership
• CLO holds a C-suite position with broader responsibilities beyond pure legal work

The CLO role represents an evolution in how companies view legal leadership. CLOs typically oversee functions like compliance, risk management, corporate governance, government affairs, and increasingly, areas like environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives.

Why the path isn’t always linear

Real in-house careers rarely follow this progression step-by-step. Attorneys move between practice areas, switch industries, or take lateral moves to gain broader experience—28% of in-house counsel changed jobs in the past two years alone. Some skip levels by joining smaller companies where they can take on greater responsibility faster.

The two CLOs featured in this article—Carolyn Herzog of Elastic and Michele Lau of GoDaddy—took notably different paths to leadership. Their experiences show that what matters most isn’t following a prescribed sequence. It’s building diverse experiences that prepare you to think strategically about business, not just legal issues.

What makes in-house legal different from firm life

In-house legal work differs from law firm practice in three fundamental ways. You serve one client—your employer—rather than multiple clients. Your success gets measured by business outcomes, not billable hours. Your role extends beyond legal advice to include strategic business partnership.

The shift from law firm to in-house requires adjusting your mindset about what “good work” means. At a firm, you bill time and provide expert legal analysis. In-house, you balance legal risk against business opportunity. You need to understand how your company makes money, what your business partners care about, and when saying “no” actually helps versus when it just creates friction.

This context matters because in-house legal departments increasingly look for lawyers who can think like business people. The career growth tips that follow reflect this reality—advancing in-house requires more than excellent legal skills.

1. Grow your career with new experiences

Seeking diverse experiences is how successful in-house lawyers build careers that reach senior leadership. The CLOs who spoke with us—Herzog and Lau—credit their willingness to try new things as a key differentiator in their career progression.

Explore the world, learn from travel

Geographic and professional diversity builds career advantages that pure legal expertise can’t replicate. Herzog lived in Wisconsin, New York City, Washington DC, France, and London before settling in Silicon Valley. Lau worked for the Japanese government before attending Cornell Law, then gained experience at both a law firm and in-house before joining GoDaddy in 2021.

These varied experiences created unexpected career opportunities. “I just had so many different experiences with people who enabled me to try new things,” Herzog explained. “I think the theme is that a career isn’t a straight line.”

That reputation became self-reinforcing for Lau, too. “Once I had that reputation for being someone that wanted to learn more and try new things, opportunities started to come to me,” she said. Family encouragement shaped both leaders’ willingness to step into unfamiliar situations—a trait that later defined their leadership approaches.

The path to the C-suite is paved with curiosity

Reaching the C-suite as a legal leader requires intellectual curiosity that extends beyond legal expertise. The chief legal officer role encompasses broader business responsibilities than the traditional general counsel position. CLOs typically oversee compliance, corporate governance, social impact, sustainability, and diversity initiatives—not just legal matters.

This expanded scope demands a different way of thinking. “The functions that many CLOs oversee, myself included, are really broad and varied, and that’s super challenging and very exciting at the same time,” Lau explained. “The way that we contribute to the conversation in the C-Suite is more than a legal conversation.”

Successful CLOs ask questions about business strategy, not just legal risk. They understand financial models, operational challenges, and competitive dynamics. This breadth of interest separates leaders who reach the top from those who plateau at senior counsel levels.

2. Provide value to the entire business

Demonstrating value to the business is how in-house legal teams move from being seen as cost centers to strategic partners. Legal professionals who advance to senior roles don’t just provide excellent legal analysis—they connect their work to company objectives and measure their impact on business outcomes.

The value of legal as a strategic partner

Strategic partnership means aligning legal work with company objectives rather than just providing legal opinions. This requires understanding what the business is trying to achieve, then deploying legal resources to support those goals. This is where modern tools make a massive difference—according to our State of AI in Legal 2026 Report, 99% of legal professionals say that using AI results in measurable business outcomes like reduction in outside counsel spend and faster contracting cycle times.

Herzog starts with company priorities, not legal tasks. “Determining value has to start with, ‘What are the objectives of the company? What are you trying to achieve? We have to connect our resources in the most effective, efficient way,’” she explained.

Lau sees the strategic role as connecting different parts of the organization. “There was a time when lawyers in particular would be heads down, focused on mitigating risk,” she said. “Now it really is about, how do you help be the strategic connector across the enterprise? How do you think about the external landscape and be a strategic business partner?”

That shift from reactive to proactive is what separates good lawyers from great legal leaders. Modern legal leaders identify opportunities to provide insight before they’re asked. They anticipate where legal knowledge can drive better business decisions—not just protect against bad ones.

Strong leaders build community

Building community means surrounding yourself with strong people who complement your expertise. No CLO can be expert in every legal domain or business function. The most effective leaders create networks of talented colleagues both inside and outside their organizations.

Lau embeds legal partners directly into business departments. These partners attend leadership and planning meetings for their assigned functions. This approach helps them understand business context fully and bring relevant needs back to the legal team, rather than working from isolated legal-only discussions.

3. Lead through uncertainty and complexity

Leading through uncertainty requires maintaining focus on priorities while staying flexible about execution. In-house legal leaders face constant change—budget constraints, shifting business strategies, regulatory developments, and resource limitations. How you respond to these pressures shapes your career trajectory.

Economic uncertainty doesn’t mean postponing investments that improve how legal teams work. Smart technology choices can help you deliver more value even when resources are tight.

Work smarter with technology

Technology fluency is becoming a career differentiator for in-house lawyers, with 52% of in-house counsel now actively using GenAI in their practice. Understanding what tools can and can’t do—and knowing when to deploy them—allows you to scale your impact without adding headcount.

Lau sees economic constraints as opportunities to invest strategically in technology. “A lot of times the knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Okay, we have to cut costs. We were going to make these technology investments, so we should just cut those now,’” she explained.

This reaction misses a key reality. Manual processes require people, and 83% of legal departments expect demand to increase. If you can’t hire more lawyers but your workload keeps growing, you need tools that automate routine tasks. The good news is that these tools are actively improving quality of life, as our State of AI in Legal in 2025 Report found that 76% of legal professionals agree that using AI helps reduce feelings of burnout. AI can handle contract review, clause identification, and obligation tracking at scale—freeing lawyers to focus on complex negotiations and strategic guidance. That’s the kind of work that actually advances careers, and it’s exactly what Herzog means when she says:

Technology doesn’t eliminate legal jobs. “It’s going to make your job better,” she said. “It’s going to take away the stuff you don’t want to do, and there’s going to be a bigger need for lawyers just doing the right type of work.”

Lawyers who understand and embrace technology position themselves as valuable strategic partners rather than expensive resources who slow down business.

Lead with empathy and focus

Leading through complexity requires focus, empathy, and comfort with ambiguity. The best leaders maintain steady priorities even when circumstances shift rapidly.

Lau considers how economic challenges affect team members differently based on their experience. “I am mindful that we probably all have a number of members of our teams who weren’t working during the downturns in 2001 or 2008,” she explained. “So this actually may be the first time that they’re experiencing it. I try to keep that in mind because it can be scary.”

Strategies for doing more with less matter. But so does leading with empathy and keeping employees engaged and included during uncertain times.

Herzog draws on advice from a former World Bank colleague when facing overwhelming complexity. “She used to say you don’t have to drink the ocean”—meaning you don’t have to solve everything at once. Getting through difficult periods means taking it one step at a time and sticking to your plan.

How the tools you use shape the career you build

The technology you choose to work with signals how you approach your role. In-house lawyers who seek out tools that automate routine work demonstrate strategic thinking about their time and their team’s capacity.

Contract lifecycle management (CLM) platforms with AI capabilities can review standard agreements, flag non-standard clauses, and track obligations across hundreds of contracts. This isn’t about replacing legal judgment—it’s about reserving that judgment for situations where it matters most.

Legal professionals who embrace these tools position themselves differently than peers who resist change—notably, only 22% of legal organizations have a defined AI strategy. They show business leaders that legal can scale without constant headcount additions. They free up time to work on complex negotiations, strategic initiatives, and cross-functional projects that build visibility and influence.

Your choice of tools also affects your team’s standing as a department. When you can turn around a standard NDA in hours instead of days, you help the business move faster instead of holding it back. The data backs this up—enterprise teams leveraging contract automation achieved a 14% reduction in legal involvement year over year, according to our 2026 Contracting Benchmark Report. By stepping out of routine reviews, they freed up capacity for high-value deals.

The in-house lawyers who advance fastest understand this connection between their tools, their reputation, and their career trajectory. They don’t wait for someone else to implement better systems—they advocate for them.

The path to senior legal leadership in-house isn’t about following a predetermined sequence of promotions. It’s about seeking diverse experiences, connecting your work to business outcomes, and leading effectively through uncertainty. The CLOs who shared these insights—Herzog and Lau—reached their positions by treating their careers as opportunities to learn and adapt, not just advance.

Technology plays an increasingly important role in this equation. Legal professionals who understand what modern contract management platforms can do position themselves as strategic partners who help their organizations move faster without adding risk.

If you’re thinking about how to make legal a business driver rather than a cost center, seeing how teams do it in practice can help. Request a demo to see how in-house legal teams use Ironclad to work faster and demonstrate measurable business impact.

Frequently asked questions about the in-house counsel career

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Ironclad is not a law firm, and this post does not constitute or contain legal advice. To evaluate the accuracy, sufficiency, or reliability of the ideas and guidance reflected here, or the applicability of these materials to your business, you should consult with a licensed attorney. Use of and access to any of the resources contained within Ironclad’s site do not create an attorney-client relationship between the user and Ironclad.