The Executive Hire Many High-Growth Companies Still Get Wrong
The way a company hires its first senior lawyer reveals a great deal about how it views legal itself. Businesses that see legal primarily as a safeguard often wait until complexity forces the hire. The companies that scale most effectively make a different decision: they appoint a legal executive early because they understand the role is not simply to manage risk, but to help the business grow intelligently.
Founders readily invest in exceptional leaders across engineering, product, finance, and go-to-market because they understand that those functions create leverage across the business. The strongest leaders eventually conclude that legal belongs in that same category.
Recent unicorn hiring patterns suggest that many high-growth companies have yet to reach that conclusion. We looked at 77 US venture-backed companies that reached unicorn status during the first half of 2026, only 24 currently have a General Counsel. Many are already operating internationally and building regulated products, yet fewer than one-third have formally appointed a senior legal executive.