[note: This article is the third in a three-part series. For parts one and two please click here and here.]

By Daniela Aroche

Once you have decided that a move into corporate management is for you, how do you go about making the switch to that venerated CEO position?

According to David Talalla, director of recruitment company David Talalla & Associates, the lawyer's route of ascent to the loftiest of corporate management positions depends largely on the type of management role in question.

"It depends on the role [you want]. If it's a legal-related management position then most companies would be looking for a candidate with top-tier firm experience. However, with a non-legal corporate management position, a law degree and background is highly regarded especially if it is combined with some form of management skills and a qualification such as an MBA," he said. "Nevertheless, the more common route is to practice in a firm for several years before going on secondment with a client or being hired by a client as in-house counsel, and then from there moving to a management position."

Like many lawyers who shift into corporate management roles, Gai McGrath, general manager of customer service at BT Financial Group (BTFG - the wealth management division of Westpac), began her legal career as a private-practice lawyer.

She began in 1986 as a solicitor with Sydney-based law firm Rosenblum & Partners, before studying at the London School of Economics for a masters in law in1989. After a stint practicing as a solicitor with London law firm, SJ Berwin & Co, she returned to Rosenblums (she became a partner in 1993) before moving into an in-house role and then progressing to a true management role.

"In 1996 [after seven years in private-practice] I decided to make the step to in-house counsel when I joined Perpetual, eventually becoming general counsel & company secretary in 1999. At this point I joined Perpetual's executive team and was able to gain broad exposure to the company's business and strategic decision-making - this opened my eyes to the opportunity to take the step beyond being a strategic adviser to being a strategic decision-maker," she said.

Although the climb into corporate management was luckily effortless for McGrath, she admits it was a career change which required full focus and total commitment

"For me it was a smooth transition because firstly by being the general manager of Risk Solutions at BT I had already moved away from day to day legal work and secondly I made the conscious decision not to renew my practicing certificate so that I didn't have that "safety blanket" and had to be fully committed to the transition."

John O'Sullivan, currently chairman of the Australian Investment Banking Department of Credit Suisse (Australia) Limited, however, had a different experience.

He also got his start as a private-practice lawyer - beginning work at Freehills straight out of law school in 1978, where he spent the next 25 years (becoming a partner in 1983) before becoming general counsel at CBA in June 2003.

"I joined Credit Suisse at the start of 2008, but the two big changes in my career path -from private practice to general counsel at CBA and then my move from CBA to Credit Suisse - were driven by very similar catalysts. Each was partly opportunistic in that I was lucky enough to be offered fascinating, challenging roles with world class organisations. But more importantly, each gave me an opportunity to stretch myself, to widen my skills and do something genuinely new and exciting," he said.

"However, [in my opinion] it's not an easy transition. You do need to unlearn some of the things you value as a lawyer. For example you need to learn to manage risk, not avoid it altogether. You also need to learn new skills - for example, lawyers aren't always necessarily good at managing larger teams of people."

To learn these skills, several lawyers who have eventually made the move into management have undertaken a series of courses to help them acquire or hone the skills required to succeed in corporate management type roles. Although the completion of these courses has not single-handedly guided them to corporate glory, it has certainly helped.

"In 2005 I did the International Executive program at Insead Business School in Fontainebleau in France and Singapore," said McGrath.

"This program is specifically designed for executives making the transition from more technical roles to broader general management; and in addition to teaching me about technical subjects such as marketing and financial management, the course helped me understand what I needed to change about the way I operated in order to be successful in a broader role."

David Krasnostein, now head of MLC Private Equity, undertook the same course at INSEAD shortly before his move into management and although the course helped cement his decision to make the jump, he says making the right choice about which management role he wanted was equally important to his success and the ease of the transition.

"The INSEAD course was very useful in helping me to move into the corporate management role, but it was a natural transition. I had to move to a management role which was going to hold my interest," he said.

"John Stewart (who was the CEO of NAB at the time) had shown me a few businesses that he was happy for me to run, but upon closer examination, they seemed to involve a lot of operational type issues. What attracted me to the private equity business was that it appeared to be the logical next step from what I had already been doing. Private equity at its simplest is really buying and selling companies, which is something I had been doing for about 30 years - albeit from the legal side - so at least the concept and the core business was something I was very familiar with."

However, no road to success is the same - as O'Sullivan reveals. Unlike McGrath and Krasnostein, he did not study any management course before landing his role in corporate management, but says that despite that many of the skills he learnt as a lawyer were useful in adjusting to the move.

"I had no formal training but lots of on-the-job crash courses!" he said. "But on the other hand life as an in-house lawyer does teach you how large organisations work and does teach you very valuable skills enabling you to maximise your impact in a corporate setting.

"The key skills in corporate management are people skills as much as (or more than) technical skills.  Strategic vision and industry understanding are also critical.  For lawyers, technical skills are critical, people skills are important and strategic understanding is nice. So different priorities among the skill set apply to managers as opposed to lawyers."

Experience as an in-house lawyer undoubtedly provides an advantage for those looking to move into management but it is important to keep mind that while the skills and responsibilities learnt as a lawyer are an added bonus, they alone are not the key to success. 

"Take the time to undertake some self-reflection and 360 degree feedback so you understand that what made you successful as a lawyer may not be what will make you successful in a general management role.  You may need to be prepared to change in some fundamental ways and unless you're willing to undertake this difficult transition it may not be for you," said McGrath.

Peter Turner, chief executive officer of the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association, who himself made the move from in-house lawyer (previously head of legal at Fosters) to a corporate management role, agrees that whilst there is no set map to corporate glory, there are two windows of opportunity along a lawyers career path during which a successful switch is more likely.

"It is generally quite difficult to make the transition into a more strategic role because you are always in a position where you have to trade off what it might do to your career as a lawyer and whether you will be able to return to a legal role down the track," he said.

"[For this reason] I believe you have to make the jump fairly early or quite late, rather than at mid-level. If you make the move earlier, you have the opportunity to recover and you also have the opportunity to come into a management role at a time where other people are also doing the same and you'll really succeed on your own merit. If you do it later in your career, you have all the accumulated experience of having worked across the organisation as senior counsel and had the years of management to see how it works in practice. Then you can make that change at that level almost seamlessly. Many lawyers contemplating that kind of switch later in their careers also augment their training by doing MBAs or financial skills training or public speaking training."