CLO (Chief Legal Officer)

Also known as: Chief Legal Officer, General Counsel, Chief Legal Counsel, VP Legal, Head of Legal.

What does a CLO do?

A CLO is the head of the legal function who sits on the executive team, reports to the CEO and owns the legal side of every business decision. In a tech company that means corporate structure, deals, intellectual property, personal data, product regulation and disputes. A good CLO finds a legal way to do what the business needs and is honest about where the risk is too high.

• Runs fundraising rounds, option plans and M&A deals together with the CEO and CFO.
• Builds the structure of legal entities for the markets the company works in.
• Prepares the company for data, payments and AI regulation in its jurisdictions.
• Builds the legal team and decides what goes to outside counsel.
• Explains legal risks to the board and the CEO in plain language.

When does a company need a CLO?

A company usually needs a CLO when legal questions start to set the pace of the business: before a large round or a sale of the company, when entering several regulated markets, when getting licences in fintech or health, after the first serious dispute. By then there are often in-house lawyers and outside firms, but nobody who owns the whole picture before the board. If there is little legal work and it is mostly contracts, a CLO comes too early: a strong Senior Legal Counsel and a trusted outside firm are enough.

CLO vs Head of Legal: what's the difference?

A CLO differs from a Head of Legal in the level of responsibility: the CLO answers for legal decisions to the CEO and the board, while a Head of Legal runs the legal team within limits set from above. In practice the titles often mix. A CISO differs from a CLO in subject: information security belongs to the CISO, and the CLO covers its legal side, such as notifying regulators after a breach.

CLO vs related roles: comparison

Why is it hard to hire a CLO?

A CLO is hard to hire because few people combine the right jurisdictions, industry experience and the ability to work at executive level.

• Law is local: experience in one country transfers poorly to another, and a requirement like "knows Cypriot, UK and EU law" leaves a very narrow circle of candidates.
• Lawyers from large law firms are technically strong but often have never made decisions inside a business and lived with the consequences.
• A CV shows which deals went through a lawyer, but not what role they played in them or whether they found the solutions themselves.
• Experienced CLOs rarely move between deals: they usually leave after a round or an exit.

What to decide before hiring a CLO?

• Which jurisdictions does the company work in, and where is it going next? This defines whose law the candidate must know, and a mistake here makes the whole search useless.
• What is the main legal task for the next year? A round, a licence, an international structure and a court dispute need different experience.
• Will the CLO have a team, or build one? Someone used to a team of ten lawyers will struggle working alone.
• Does the role include compliance, personal data and corporate secretary duties? Without an agreement up front, these areas end up owned by nobody.

Where to find a CLO?

CLOs most often come from General Counsel or Head of Legal roles at tech, fintech and AI companies with a similar model and geography, and from international law firms whose lawyers move in-house. A strong signal is a candidate who took a company through a round, a licensing process or a new market and stayed on after it. NEWHR looks for such candidates by the results of their work, not by applications to a job post.

How to assess a CLO in an interview?

A CLO is assessed through a walkthrough of deals and projects the candidate led personally and a case on a real legal problem of the company. On the company side the CEO, the CFO and a board member usually take part; references come from CEOs and outside counsel the candidate worked with.

Strong signals:

• describes their role in a deal precisely: which risk they found and which compromise they proposed;
• explains a complex legal question so that the CEO can decide right away;
• shows how they put a price on a risk so the CEO could weigh it against the gain.

Red flags:

• answers every question with a list of prohibitions and no options;
• cannot separate their own work from the outside firm's work;
• does not know the jurisdictions where the company makes most of its revenue.

How long does it take to hire a CLO?

We present the first candidates for the CLO role within 5–7 days of the brief. The whole search usually takes one to six months.

Related roles

• CFO — runs finance and prepares rounds and deals with the CLO, but owns money, not law.
• CISO — protects data and systems technically; the CLO owns the legal side of security.
• GR Director — works with regulators on rules being prepared, while the CLO works with the law in force.