The April 2016 issue of Corporate Counsel Magazine (subscription required) features an article by Ben W. Heineman, Jr., who served as GE’s senior vice president-general counsel from 1987 to 2003 and then senior vice president for law and public affairs from 2004 until his retirement at the end of 2005. Heineman is currently a senior fellow at Harvard’s schools of law and government. The article contains excerpts from Heineman’s much-anticipated forthcoming book, The Inside Counsel Revolution: Resolving the Partner-Guardian Tension (Ankerwycke, 2016).

In the book, Heineman makes the case for his ambitious vision of the modern general counsel: “a lawyer statesperson who is an outstanding technical expert, a wise counselor and an effective leader, and who has a major role [in] assisting the corporation [to] achieve the fundamental goal of global capitalism: the fusion of high performance with high integrity and sound risk management.” In carrying out this role, the general counsel must resolve “the most basic problem confronting inside lawyers: being partner to the board of directors, the CEO and business leaders but ultimately being guardian of the corporation.” Accordingly, the book provides some guidance on how to resolve the partner-guardian tension that is inherent in the role.

The book can be pre-ordered here.