Interim Chief Legal Officer — Controls

Two years of settled contractual authority

Start at the end. By month 24 the organisation should be growing without anyone wondering who was entitled to sign. Contractual authority should hold as new leases, development agreements and service contracts are written, and legal exceptions should reach the board on a settled cycle rather than in a rush before a meeting.

Getting there begins in the first ninety days, with the Regional President. Together you will agree the thresholds of contractual authority, the limits that stay with local leaders, and a complete register of the contracts the organisation has inherited. The register matters more than it sounds: in property, a side letter or an informal extension can carry obligations that outlive everyone who agreed to it.

By around month nine, signing authority should be working in practice, and so should the route by which a legal problem travels upward. Every inherited contract should by then have a verdict, whether it continues, is paused or is brought to an end, and each should have a single person answerable for it.

Executive power over the legal book

This is an executive appointment, not a counselling one, and the authority is real. You will decide which legal decisions are taken centrally and which limits stay local, and fix the evidence base on which funding, people and approvals are committed. The fate of inherited commitments and contracts is yours to decide. If a lease restructuring, a development agreement or a funding request moves cost or risk onto another party with nobody named to carry it, you send it back; the same goes for any investment case that is silent on adoption, on the other agreements it leans on, or on how badly it could go. You will shape the legal leadership and the way issues travel upward, and resolve conflicts between the Regional President and operating leaders.

An early success here may well be a commitment you stopped rather than an initiative you launched, and you should be ready to defend that choice with evidence. Growth makes contractual exposure harder to unwind; the value of the seat lies in resolving authority before that exposure becomes irreversible.

A general counsel who has moved authority mid-flight

You have led legal teams in organisations no smaller than $730 million in revenue, with at least 2,800 people working across six or more countries. Ideally you have moved signing authority, budgets and the working rhythm of a legal team through a carve-out, when the business could not stop trading while its legal plumbing was rebuilt. Professionalisation and ESG transition experience also count, the latter because sustainability undertakings are increasingly written into leases and financing terms. Expect governance ethics to be tested at level 4; your transaction work, your handling of disputes and investigations, and your management of the board and stakeholders will be tested at level 3.

When a gap is still open, you can explain it to the Regional President and say what you would do in the meantime. You will not need unanimous consent from country leaders before stopping a legal commitment, and you will keep local discretion only where it earns its place, not where it merely shields a habit. Above all, you intend to own the outcome until the last day of the two years.

Twice with the Regional President, then the wider room

The Regional President is the first person you meet, and the second. During week one a discreet video conversation covers the mandate; in the third week you sit down together again and take a live contractual question apart. By week five you are in the room with executive leaders representing each function, and they will test how your authority framework would work for the people who negotiate leases and run buildings. The final conversation, in the seventh week, is with the full board of directors. Our view on each stage reaches you within five working days.