General Counsel Hiring in Germany: What Changes After Series C

There is a point in the growth of a venture-backed company when the question around Legal changes.

By Series C and beyond, many businesses already have an established legal function. That might mean a General Counsel with a small team, a Head of Legal leading several lawyers, or a more developed department with specialists across areas such as commercial, employment, privacy, regulatory or corporate matters.

At this stage, the question is therefore not necessarily whether the company needs more legal support.

It is whether the legal leadership and structure in place today are right for the next phase of the business.

A company moving into new markets, taking on larger enterprise customers, operating under greater regulatory scrutiny, making acquisitions or preparing for a future sale or IPO may need something different from Legal than it did two or three years earlier.

That does not automatically mean replacing the existing General Counsel or restructuring the team. In many cases, the people already there will be well placed to make that journey.

But when a company is hiring – whether because the GC is leaving or the business has decided to bring in a different type of legal leader – the brief should be built around where the company is going next, rather than simply recreating the role as it exists today.

The General Counsel brief changes as the business matures

A later-stage venture-backed company often needs something quite different from Legal than it did at Series A or B.

The legal leader may still need to be hands-on, but the role increasingly becomes about judgement, prioritisation and building the right structure around the business.

That can mean deciding what the legal team should own, where external support is still useful, how the function should scale, and how Legal works with the executive team and board.

The role becomes less about personally handling every important issue and more about making sure the function is set up to support the company effectively as it grows.

That shift is easy to underestimate.

A lawyer who was exceptionally effective when the company was smaller may still be the right person to lead the next phase. But the role itself will almost certainly have changed around them.

Hire for the next stage, not the current job

When an existing General Counsel leaves, one of the easiest things to do is dust off the old job description.

It is also one of the easiest ways to hire for the company you were rather than the company you are becoming.

A role written two or three years earlier reflects the circumstances at the time. Since then, the business may have entered several new countries, changed its customer base, brought in new investors, grown the management team or developed a very different exit horizon.

Before starting a search, it is worth going back to the business plan.

Where should the company be in three years if things go well?

What is likely to become materially more complicated along the way?

And which parts of that journey would be easier with a General Counsel who has already experienced them?

The strongest candidate is not necessarily the person who looks most like the outgoing GC.

Quite often, it is the person whose experience looks most like the company's future.

Stage experience can matter more than pedigree

This is particularly important when companies decide they need to "upgrade" the legal function.

There can be a tendency to jump immediately towards candidates from much larger, more established organisations.

That can work extremely well. But a bigger company name does not automatically mean a better fit.

A GC coming from a large listed business may be accustomed to substantial teams, specialist support and processes that have existed for years. A venture-backed company may still need someone who is comfortable moving between a board discussion and a difficult operational issue on the same day.

The more useful comparison is often the transition the candidate has already experienced.

Have they helped a business expand internationally?

Have they seen a legal function grow from a handful of lawyers into a more structured team?

Have they worked through a period of increasing regulation?

Have they supported acquisitions, a major financing round or preparation for a transaction?

Have they operated through the point where a founder-led organisation becomes a more institutional business?

The better question is often not:

How big was their last company?

It is:

Have they already been through the transition we are about to make?

For a Series C+ business, that can tell you considerably more.

Being the strongest lawyer and leading Legal are not always the same job

Earlier in a company's development, a senior lawyer can become incredibly valuable because they know the organisation inside out.

They know the history behind the contracts, the investors, the product, the personalities and the decisions that got the business to where it is today.

That institutional knowledge is difficult to replace.

But as the function becomes larger, the leadership requirement can change.

At a certain scale, being the person with the answers and being the person who can lead the legal function can become two different jobs.

The GC increasingly needs to prioritise where Legal spends its time, develop the people underneath them, challenge senior stakeholders, allocate resources and make decisions about what the function should look like in two or three years.

For some existing legal leaders, that transition is completely natural.

Others may prefer remaining closer to the technical work.

Neither is inherently better.

What matters is understanding which type of role the company now needs.

The player-manager balance

Later-stage venture-backed companies also tend to require an unusual balance.

They need someone senior enough to operate credibly with the CEO, investors and board, but not so far removed from the work that they are uncomfortable getting involved when something important lands.

Someone from a very large corporate may have operated at exactly the right strategic level but no longer want to be particularly hands-on.

A strong Head of Legal from a smaller company may be highly operational but have had less exposure to investors, boards or organisational complexity at the next level.

The strongest candidates can usually operate comfortably at both levels.

They can move between strategic leadership and the detail when required, without needing a large corporate infrastructure around them.

For a VC-backed company, that flexibility is often more useful than a perfectly linear CV.

Think about the team the GC will inherit

The GC search should not only be about the person at the top.

By Series C and beyond, there may already be a substantial legal team underneath them.

That changes the assessment.

What is working well today?

Where is the team particularly strong?

What does the new GC need to add rather than replicate?

Are there future leaders already inside the function?

And what will the team need to look like in another two or three years?

A new General Counsel who arrives with a fixed idea of how Legal "should" operate can sometimes cause as many problems as they solve.

The better leaders tend to understand the organisation first.

They work out what should be preserved, what needs to change and where additional capability is genuinely required.

That is particularly important when inheriting an established team.

The search should therefore consider not just whether a candidate can lead Legal, but whether they are the right person to lead this legal team through its next stage.

Think about the transaction before it is on the doorstep

For some later-stage businesses, the next phase may eventually end in an IPO, strategic sale or another significant liquidity event.

Germany has not had a particularly active IPO market in recent years. Frankfurt saw just three IPOs in 2025, making it the weakest year since 2020.

That does not mean the ambition has disappeared.

For many founders and investors, a public listing remains one possible end goal, even if it is still several years away or ultimately happens outside Germany.

At Series C, any potential transaction may still feel a long way off.

But the preparation usually starts much earlier.

Governance, reporting, internal processes, corporate structure and the quality of the legal function can all become increasingly important well before a formal process begins.

That can make previous experience of a similar journey valuable even if an exit is still several years away.

The company does not necessarily need a lawyer who has completed several IPOs. But if management believes the business could realistically be preparing for one in three years, it is worth asking whether the next GC should understand what needs to happen before a formal IPO process begins.

The same applies to M&A.

If acquisitions are likely to become an important part of the growth strategy, it can make sense to hire someone who has already operated in that environment rather than waiting until the first deal is underway.

Hiring for the next phase means looking at events that have not happened yet.

Internal succession should be assessed in the same way

Sometimes the best candidate is already inside the business.

A Head of Legal or Deputy General Counsel may have deep institutional knowledge, strong relationships with management and a better understanding of the business than any external hire could quickly develop.

That should count for a great deal.

But an internal candidate should still be assessed against the next version of the role.

One useful test is:

If this person worked somewhere else today, would we hire them for the GC position we are now designing?

If the answer is yes, succession may be the obvious choice.

If the answer is "not quite yet", that does not necessarily mean an external appointment is required.

The gap may be something the company can solve through additional senior support, broader exposure to the board or changes elsewhere in the team.

The important thing is not to assume that promotion is automatically right because someone has been there for years, or that an external hire is automatically better because they bring a bigger title.

The same future-focused assessment should apply to both.

Senior candidates will assess your next phase too

The company is not the only party thinking about what comes next.

Experienced General Counsel candidates will usually conduct their own diligence on the opportunity.

They will want to understand why the role is open.

What the relationship between the CEO, board and investors looks like.

How the company is funded.

Whether another financing round is likely.

What the longer-term ownership story might be.

How much authority Legal genuinely has.

And what they are actually being brought in to change or build.

If the role is a replacement, candidates will naturally want to understand what happened before.

That does not mean disclosing confidential details about the previous GC.

But the company should be able to explain why it is recruiting and what it hopes will be different in the next phase.

Senior candidates are rarely attracted by a title alone.

They are assessing the journey they are being asked to join.

Hire for the journey ahead

There is no single General Counsel profile that is right for every Series C company in Germany.

A Berlin marketplace, a Munich deep-tech company and a Frankfurt fintech may all be at a similar funding stage and need completely different legal leaders.

The better starting point is therefore not a standard GC job description.

It is the journey the company still has ahead of it.

The existing legal leader may be exactly the person to make that journey.

An internal successor may be ready to step up.

Or an external hire may bring experience the business has not previously needed.

What matters is being deliberate about the decision.

For senior legal searches, some of the strongest candidates are not necessarily those with the biggest title or the best-known company on their CV. They are often the people who have already experienced something close to what the business is about to go through.

When hiring a General Counsel for the next phase, that is usually the better place to start.