Top 12 General Counsel Skills to Put on Your Resume

Crafting an effective resume as a General Counsel takes more than listing titles. You’re telling a story of judgment, influence, and command of risk. Spotlight skills that show you can steer through thorny legal terrain while propelling the business forward. That mix of precision and pragmatism separates contenders from noise.

General Counsel Skills

1. Contract Negotiation
2. Compliance Management
3. Litigation Strategy
4. Intellectual Property
5. Corporate Governance
6. Risk Assessment
7. Data Privacy (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA)
8. Employment Law
9. Mergers & Acquisitions
10. Legal Research (Westlaw, LexisNexis)
11. Financial Acumen
12. Board Advisory

1. Contract Negotiation

Contract negotiation is the push-and-pull of shaping terms so the deal fits commercial reality and legal boundaries. For a General Counsel, that means probing clauses, allocating risk with intent, and locking in protections that stand up when things wobble.

Why It's Important

It keeps agreements enforceable, aligned with the organization’s aims, and buffered against ugly surprises. Good negotiations save money, prevent disputes, and speed execution. They also build relationships that make the next deal easier.

How to Improve Contract Negotiation Skills

Sharpening negotiation comes from groundwork, clarity, and agility. Try this:

1. Preparation: Map your objectives, pressures, and fallback positions. Know the other side’s incentives and constraints.

2. Clear Objectives: Define red lines and areas for trade. Prioritize outcomes over wording battles.

3. Build Relationships: Trust oils the gears. Rapport turns stalemates into options.

4. Communication: Listen hard, speak plainly, avoid posturing. Probe interests beneath demands.

5. Flexibility and Creativity: Swap value across terms—timing, scope, pricing mechanics, incentives. Win-win isn’t fluff; it’s leverage.

6. Legal and Commercial Fluency: Stay current on law and market norms so your positions feel reasonable, not rigid.

7. Use Technology: Contract lifecycle tools surface clauses, risks, and obligations fast.

8. Call in Specialists: Tax, privacy, export controls—pull expertise when the stakes justify it.

Iterate. After every deal, run a quick postmortem and fold the lessons into your playbook.

How to Display Contract Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

2. Compliance Management

Compliance Management is the system that keeps your company onside—laws, regulations, codes of conduct—woven into daily operations. As General Counsel, you architect, monitor, and refine that system to reduce risk and sustain trust.

Why It's Important

It prevents penalties and operational shocks, protects reputation, and creates predictability. Done well, compliance becomes a business enabler, not a brake.

How to Improve Compliance Management Skills

1. Assess Risks: Identify the regulatory hotspots for your business model and geographies. Rank them by likelihood and impact.

2. Build Clear Policies: Write for humans. Keep procedures practical, roles explicit, and ownership visible.

3. Train Relentlessly: Brief, periodic, role-based training beats one-time marathons.

4. Leverage Tech: Use compliance software for tracking attestations, audits, disclosures, and deadlines.

5. Monitor and Audit: Test controls, sample for exceptions, and close gaps with timelines and owners.

6. Culture First: Leaders model standards. Recognition for speaking up matters.

7. Continuously Improve: Regulations shift; your program should too. Refresh based on incidents, audits, and business changes.

How to Display Compliance Management Skills on Your Resume

3. Litigation Strategy

Litigation strategy is the blueprint for disputes—what to press, what to concede, where to settle, when to fight. It blends legal analysis with business risk, budget reality, and reputational calculus.

Why It's Important

Because wandering through litigation is expensive. Strategy sets direction, trims waste, and aligns outcomes with company priorities.

How to Improve Litigation Strategy Skills

1. Early Case Assessment: Within weeks, size up merits, exposure, and endgames. Decide: defend, resolve, or reframe.

2. Use Technology: E-discovery, analytics, and case management tools cut noise and surface signal.

3. Manage Outside Counsel: Expectations, budgets, reporting cadence—no ambiguity. Treat the matter like a project.

4. Control Costs: Alternative fees, phased budgets, and staffing plans curb surprises.

5. Stay Current: Trends in procedure and precedent evolve. Track them, adapt quickly.

6. Consider ADR: Mediation or arbitration can collapse timelines and save relationships.

7. Train the Team: Refresh playbooks, lessons learned, and deposition skills. Keep the muscle memory strong.

Clarity beats bravado. Pick the right battles and prosecute them with discipline.

How to Display Litigation Strategy Skills on Your Resume

4. Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property (IP) spans patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and designs. It guards invention and identity—the ideas and marks that power market advantage.

Why It's Important

IP protection deters copycats, unlocks licensing revenue, and underpins valuation. For a General Counsel, smart IP stewardship reduces disputes and turns know-how into durable leverage.

How to Improve Intellectual Property Skills

1. Run IP Audits: Inventory patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets. Map ownership, status, and gaps.

2. Set Strategy: Decide what to protect, where, and why. Tie filings to markets and product roadmaps.

3. Secure Rights Early: File on timelines. Lock down confidentiality and invention assignment from day one.

4. Enforce Smartly: Monitor for infringement. Calibrate responses—notice letters, takedowns, or litigation—based on risk and ROI.

5. Educate Teams: Teach engineers, marketers, and sales how IP is created, preserved, and accidentally lost.

6. Monetize: Consider licensing, cross-licensing, or divestment of non-core assets.

7. Prune the Portfolio: Drop what no longer fits strategy. Focus spend where it moves the needle.

How to Display Intellectual Property Skills on Your Resume

5. Corporate Governance

Corporate governance is the framework of accountability—rules, practices, and oversight that keep a company transparent, ethical, and focused on long-term value. The General Counsel is both architect and sentinel.

Why It's Important

It shapes decision-making, clarifies responsibilities, and fortifies reputation. Strong governance reduces legal exposure and makes strategy executable.

How to Improve Corporate Governance Skills

1. Lock In Compliance: Keep policies current and enforceable. Align charters, codes, and committee mandates with law and reality.

2. Drive Transparency: Clear reporting, timely disclosures, and unvarnished board materials build trust.

3. Educate and Evaluate the Board: Ongoing education plus periodic effectiveness reviews sharpen oversight.

4. Engage Stakeholders: Employees, investors, customers, communities—listen and reflect their material concerns in governance practices.

5. Anchor Ethics: Incentives and tone-from-the-top matter. Measure and reward integrity.

Note: The G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance were updated in 2023. Ensure your framework reflects current guidance.

How to Display Corporate Governance Skills on Your Resume

6. Risk Assessment

Risk assessment spots threats early—legal, operational, financial, reputational—and sizes them up, so mitigations are deliberate, not frantic.

Why It's Important

It informs strategy, protects resources, and prevents cascading failures. You can’t manage what you don’t see.

How to Improve Risk Assessment Skills

1. Adopt a Framework: Use COSO ERM or ISO 31000 to structure identification, assessment, and response.

2. Identify Broadly: Scan for regulatory shifts, contract risks, cyber exposures, supply chain fragility, and people risks.

3. Quantify Where Possible: Mix qualitative ratings with scenario analysis and simple models to prioritize action.

4. Implement Controls: Policy, training, technical safeguards, insurance—match control strength to risk.

5. Monitor and Review: Track indicators and test controls. Refresh the register on a cadence.

6. Educate Stakeholders: Make risk literacy part of onboarding and leadership routines.

7. Use Technology: Risk tools and dashboards centralize data and accelerate response.

8. Communicate Clearly: Keep the board and executives informed with crisp summaries and clear owners.

How to Display Risk Assessment Skills on Your Resume

7. Data Privacy (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA)

Data privacy rules like the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA as amended by the CPRA set guardrails for collecting, using, sharing, and protecting personal data. Think consent, purpose limits, user rights, security, and accountability. The CPRA adds rights around sensitive data and “sharing,” plus a dedicated enforcement agency.

Why It's Important

Privacy failures trigger fines, lawsuits, and reputational scars. Strong privacy programs build trust and keep products shippable across jurisdictions.

How to Improve Data Privacy (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA) Skills

1. Master the Rules: Understand GDPR and CCPA/CPRA scoping, definitions, rights, and obligations. Track other state laws emerging across the U.S.

2. Map Data: Document data flows, systems, purposes, and processors. No map, no compliance.

3. Privacy by Design: Bake privacy into product lifecycles—defaults, minimization, retention, and security by default.

4. DPIAs: Run impact assessments for high-risk processing and record decisions.

5. Policies and Notices: Keep external notices and internal standards aligned and plain-language.

6. Appoint a DPO if Needed: When required, ensure independence and access to leadership.

7. Train Everyone: Role-based training for engineering, marketing, support, and vendors.

8. Honor Rights: Build workflows for access, deletion, correction, opt-out, and limiting sensitive data use.

9. Vendor Oversight: Contract for privacy obligations, audit where appropriate, and monitor.

10. Incident Response: Test breach playbooks. Timeframes matter; evidence trails matter more.

How to Display Data Privacy (GDPR, CCPA/CPRA) Skills on Your Resume

8. Employment Law

Employment law governs hiring, pay, benefits, safety, discrimination, leave, discipline, and separation. A General Counsel ensures policies are current, managers are trained, and disputes get resolved before they explode.

Why It's Important

It protects people and the company. Compliance cuts litigation risk, improves morale, and supports fair, consistent practices.

How to Improve Employment Law Skills

1. Stay Current: Update policies for wage and hour rules, harassment prevention, accommodations, pay transparency, and remote-work compliance.

2. Promote DEI: Build inclusive policies, measurable goals, and accountable leadership.

3. Train Managers: Short, practical training on interviewing, performance management, and investigations.

4. Strengthen Reporting Channels: Offer confidential hotlines and anti-retaliation safeguards. NAVEX is a common solution set.

5. Refresh Docs: Keep handbooks, arbitration agreements, and restrictive covenants compliant and clear.

6. Support Well-being: Integrate mental health resources and flexible work where feasible.

7. Listen Often: Use surveys and open forums. Communication tools like Slack help surface issues early.

8. Monitor Legal Trends: Track federal, state, and local shifts; recalibrate quickly.

How to Display Employment Law Skills on Your Resume

9. Mergers & Acquisitions

M&A covers buying, selling, and combining companies or assets to accelerate strategy. The General Counsel leads diligence, negotiates risk allocation, steers regulatory approvals, and choreographs closing and integration.

Why It's Important

Deals can redefine a company’s trajectory. They also carry concentrated risk. Legal leadership keeps speed without sacrificing protection.

How to Improve Mergers & Acquisitions Skills

1. Elevate Diligence: Use AI tools to triage contracts and surface anomalies. Start early, synthesize fast, escalate the material.

2. Tighten Contract Management: Centralize templates, playbooks, and clause libraries. Consistency shortens negotiations.

3. Own Risk: Build a risk register for each deal—regulatory, litigation, IP, data privacy, employment—and assign mitigations.

4. Plan Integration: Pre-close planning for people, systems, IP, and compliance avoids value leakage.

5. Communicate: Keep executives, target leadership, employees, and regulators informed with crisp, staged messaging.

6. Track Regulation: Antitrust, FDI, data transfer limits—requirements vary by jurisdiction. No surprises.

7. Negotiate with Insight: Understand the business model, not just the reps and warranties. Trade what matters, not what’s easy.

8. Build Cross-Border Muscle: Local counsel networks and playbooks make global deals smoother.

How to Display Mergers & Acquisitions Skills on Your Resume

10. Legal Research (Westlaw, LexisNexis)

Westlaw and LexisNexis anchor modern legal research—cases, statutes, regs, treatises, and tools for validating authority. Good research compresses time and sharpens strategy.

Why It's Important

Access to the right precedent, fast, turns fuzzy questions into defensible positions. It also keeps advice aligned with the latest changes.

How to Improve Legal Research (Westlaw, LexisNexis) Skills

1. Define the Issue: Frame the question precisely. Jurisdiction, posture, and desired relief narrow the field.

2. Use Boolean and Natural Language: Switch modes as needed. Iterate quickly.

3. Filter Aggressively: Jurisdiction, date, document type. Cut the noise.

4. Validate: Use KeyCite and Shepard’s to confirm good law and understand treatment.

5. Start with Practice Areas: Topic hubs often surface the most relevant sources first.

6. Leverage Secondary Sources: Treatises and practice guides can shortcut complex issues.

7. Take Training: Platform tutorials pay dividends. New features arrive often.

8. Save and Alert: Store search strings and set alerts for developments.

9. Ask Support: Librarians and vendor support can unblock thorny searches fast.

How to Display Legal Research (Westlaw, LexisNexis) Skills on Your Resume

11. Financial Acumen

Financial acumen is the ability to read the numbers and see the story—how legal choices hit revenue, margins, cash, and valuation. Counsel who speak finance shape better deals and better outcomes.

Why It's Important

It tightens risk assessments, improves board conversations, and links legal advice to business value. Fewer surprises, better tradeoffs.

How to Improve Financial Acumen Skills

1. Master the Statements: Income, balance sheet, cash flow—understand how they connect.

2. Know the Ratios: EBITDA, ROI, EPS, gross margin, cash conversion. Context matters more than the number.

3. Think Strategically: Learn how pricing, churn, capex, and capital structure sway outcomes.

4. Take Courses: Executive finance programs and online learning platforms can close gaps quickly.

5. Apply to Legal Work: Model the financial impact of litigation reserves, indemnities, and data breach costs.

6. Partner with Finance: Regular touchpoints with FP&A and controllership sharpen judgment.

How to Display Financial Acumen Skills on Your Resume

12. Board Advisory

Board Advisory is the General Counsel’s highest-leverage role: briefing directors on risk and opportunity, guiding governance, and stress-testing decisions before they harden.

Why It's Important

It ensures compliance, elevates strategy, and protects reputation. Informed boards make steadier choices.

How to Improve Board Advisory Skills

1. Deepen Legal Insight: Anticipate regulatory shifts and their business consequences.

2. Communicate Cleanly: Distill complexity. One-page memos and clear visuals beat dense decks.

3. Think Like an Operator: Tie legal guidance to revenue, risk, and runway.

4. Build Trust: Be candid, timely, and solutions-oriented. Credibility compounds.

5. Use Tools: Board portals and decision logs keep materials secure and organized.

6. Keep Learning: Governance best practices evolve. Stay in the flow.

How to Display Board Advisory Skills on Your Resume