Succession planning in legal departments often gets deferred because it doesn’t feel urgent, until it is. What follows is a practical framework for assessing your team’s bench strength before a departure forces the issue.
Audit for single points of failure. Start by identifying the roles on your team where one unexpected departure would create disproportionate disruption. These are typically the attorneys who hold the most institutional knowledge, manage the most critical relationships, or cover practice areas with limited internal redundancy. Once identified, these roles deserve specific attention, not necessarily immediate backfilling, but a deliberate plan for coverage and knowledge transfer.
Invest in cross-training before people get restless. One of the most effective retention tools available to a General Counsel is also one of the most underused: giving attorneys new challenges before they start looking for them elsewhere. Cross-training, whether rotating attorneys into adjacent practice areas, exposing them to different business units, or involving them in work above their current level, builds depth on your team while keeping your best people engaged. An attorney who is growing rarely leaves.
Identify your internal candidates early. Before any seat opens, you should have a clear sense of who on your team is ready to step into greater responsibility. This isn’t about making promises. It’s about knowing your bench. When a gap appears, the ability to promote or expand a current team member’s role, even temporarily, buys time, signals investment in your people, and often produces better outcomes than an emergency external search.
Stress-test your department against an unplanned departure. Walk through the scenario honestly: if your most critical attorney gave notice today, what would the first 30 days look like? Who absorbs what work? Where does coverage break down? What institutional knowledge walks out the door with them? This exercise is uncomfortable, and that discomfort is useful. It tells you exactly where to focus.
Bench strength isn’t built in a crisis. It’s built in the quiet periods, through deliberate attention to your team’s development, engagement, and readiness. The GCs who hire most effectively aren’t the ones who respond fastest when a seat opens. They’re the ones who have done the work to ensure that when they do hire, they’re adding to a strong team, not rebuilding a fragile one.
