General Counsel Masterclass | Session 2

Please note that this course is designed for LSE Law/Law and Finance students ONLY.

Certificates will be provided to participants who attend all three sessions. 

This three-part Masterclass offers an inside look at the world of the modern General Counsel — one of the most consequential and least understood leadership roles in business today.

Drawing on Bjarne Tellmann’s three decades of legal practice, including seventeen years as General Counsel of global public companies, the series explores how the GC role has evolved from legal adviser to strategic leader, risk architect, and institutional navigator.

The series follows a deliberate arc: from the macro forces reshaping the profession, to the micro realities of life inside a legal department, and finally to the personal choices and capabilities that define career success.

The goal is to equip students with a clear lens on how the legal profession is changing, and what it now demands of those who want to thrive within it, whether in a law firm, in-house, in academia, or with a legal services provider.

Session 2

From Law School to the C-Suite: What General Counsel and Legal Departments Actually Do in Today’s Companies

What does a General Counsel actually do? What is it like to be a lawyer in an in-house legal department?

In this second session, we move from the macro forces shaping the profession to the lived reality of in-house legal practice. We will address the questions many students have about in-house practice but rarely get answered.

Where does Legal sit inside a company? How is a department structured? How are resources allocated across crises, contracts, compliance, strategy, investigations, and board-level issues? What does it really take to run a legal function that is expected to move fast, stay credible, and protect the enterprise, often with limited resources and constant competing demands?

We will look at the General Counsel’s stakeholder universe. Few roles in a corporation are as interconnected. The GC must operate simultaneously with the CEO and Board, finance and tax, HR, technology and cybersecurity, marketing, operations, regulators, and external counsel, each with different incentives, pressures, and risk tolerances.

We will explore how Legal has shifted from being seen as the “department of no” to becoming, increasingly, the “department of how”: enabling growth, navigating grey areas, and helping organisations move forward responsibly in complex environments.

Another focus will be the evolving skillset that the modern lawyer needs. Legal expertise remains essential, but it is no longer sufficient. Success belongs to professionals who can combine doctrinal strength with:

• Strategic judgment
• Communication across legal and business worlds
• Emotional and cultural intelligence
• Comfort with ambiguity and grey zones
• Fluency in technology, data, and AI
• Leadership, teamwork, and organisational awareness

This lecture also examines the internal leadership dimension: motivating teams of lawyers, balancing specialists and generalists, managing legal as a business, and building an operating model that can thrive in an AI-enabled corporate world.

If Lecture 1 was about the horizon, Lecture 2 is about what it feels like to be steering the ship.

Speaker

Bjarne P. Tellmann is CEO of FjordStream Advisors GmbH and a Senior Visiting Fellow in Practice at the LSE Law School. He spent three decades in global legal leadership roles, including as Founding General Counsel of Haleon plc, a FTSE 20 company, and Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of Pearson plc, a FTSE 100. He has also held senior leadership positions across Europe, the United States, Asia, and the Middle East at Coca-Cola, Aramco, and Kimberly-Clark, and began his career at Sullivan & Cromwell and White & Case.

Session 1 – 3 March | 5.30pm – 7pm 
Being a General Counsel Today: Careers, Technology, and Change
Location: Student Common Room, 5th floor, CKK

Session 2 – 10 March | 5.30pm – 7pm 
From Law School to the C-Suite: What General Counsel and Legal Departments Actually Do in Today’s Companies
Location: Student Common Room, 5th floor, CKK

Session 3 – 18 March | 6pm – 7.30pm 
The Modern Legal Career: What Law School Doesn’t Teach You. Lessons from a GC
Location: Student Common Room, 5th floor, CKK