General Counsels & Public Affairs - Internal Side of Public Affairs 67

By Alan Hardacre, PhD

Co-Founder Advocacy Academy, Advocacy Strategy

Placing Public Affairs under Legal often feels logical. But without careful leadership, it can unintentionally reduce Public Affairs to a compliance function. Public Affairs operates in regulatory environments, engages policymakers, interprets legislation, manages risk exposure, and often deals with sensitive issues that carry compliance implications. The overlap is real. The Legal function is usually well-established and understood and an easy home for an often smaller and nascent Public Affairs team to sit.

But when Public Affairs sits in Legal, a key question quickly follows: How should a General Counsel lead and integrate Public Affairs effectively — without unintentionally constraining it and focusing it only on risk?

This is not a theoretical question. I have seen it repeatedly in my career – having reported to a GC myself and now getting to see it across many of my clients. Make no mistake for General Counsels, the challenge is subtle but critical: They must both manage and enable. Below are some practical reflections on how to do this well.

Why Public Affairs Often Sits in Legal

Before addressing the challenge, it’s worth acknowledging why this structure exists. Public Affairs frequently:

• Interprets evolving regulatory frameworks

• Engages policymakers on legislative proposals

• Manages policy risk and political exposure

• Coordinates during crises

• Aligns corporate positions with legal boundaries

For many Boards and CEOs, placing Public Affairs under Legal provides comfort. It signals discipline, oversight, and risk management. However, Public Affairs is not only about legal risk. It is also about:

• Shaping policy environments

• Identifying political (and commercial) opportunity

• Anticipating policy direction

• Building long-term stakeholder relationships

• Supporting commercial strategy through policy insight

It is from this second list that misunderstandings and tensions can emerge.

The Core Risk: Public Affairs Becomes Compliance-Driven

When Public Affairs reports into Legal, there is a structural gravitational pull toward caution. Legal functions are trained and focused — rightly — to:

• Protect

• Mitigate risk

• Avoid exposure

• Ensure defensibility

Public Affairs, by contrast, must:

• Influence

• Advocate

• Engage early

• Operate in ambiguity

• Sometimes take calculated positions before certainty exists

What you often therefore see is that the Public Affairs work becomes overly compliance-led. I see four patterns tending to appear:

1. Reactive posture — engaging only when legislation is already advanced i.e. there is some legal context and less ambiguity

2. Risk only — a focus only on risks – with no attention / resource for opportunity

3. Relationships underinvested – core Public Affairs relationship building often lacks internal support if it is not seen to directly support a commercial objective

4. Internal perception drift — Public Affairs becomes seen as an extension of regulatory compliance rather than a strategic function

Over time, this reduces impact and visibility — both internally and externally. For a General Counsel, recognizing this dynamic is the first leadership step.

The General Counsel’s Role: From Oversight to Strategic Stewardship

A General Counsel leading Public Affairs effectively must operate in two modes:

• Guardian of Risk - Ensure advocacy positions are defensible, compliant, and aligned with corporate principles. Using Public Affairs to manage and mitigate risk – reactively as they develop.

• Enabler of Influence - Create the space, mandate, and clarity for Public Affairs to operate proactively and more strategically.

Balancing these two roles is the art.

5 Leadership Moves for General Counsels

1. Establish a Clear Public Affairs Mandate

One of the biggest structural weaknesses I see is ambiguity about what the Public Affairs function does for the organisation. Does Public Affairs exist to:

• Monitor legislation?

• Protect against risk?

• Open markets?

• Shape policy outcomes?

• Support commercial growth?

• Build reputation?

• All of the above? Something else?

As GC, you are uniquely positioned to clarify this. Work with your Public Affairs lead to articulate:

• A Public Affairs Mission and Vision Statement – that links to Legal but is distinct from it

• Defined commercially aligned objectives

• Agreed strategies – and clarity on the timeframe that they require

• Boundaries for tactical engagement

• Escalation and governance thresholds

• A simple Goal–Objectives–Strategy–Tactics (GOST) framework can eliminate ambiguity and reduce friction between Legal and Public Affairs

2. Separate Legal Sign-Off from Strategic Direction

Another common friction point in this line reporting is that Legal looks to sign off every Public Affairs strategy, tactic and document. Legal input is essential. But if everything carries the look and feel of Legal, Public Affairs materials lose their external effectiveness. There is a difference between:

• Ensuring legal defensibility and legal confidence, and

• Rewriting strategy and documents through a legal-risk lens

If Legal becomes the de facto strategist and pen for Public Affairs, a few things happen:

• Public Affairs loses ownership

• Decision-making slows dramatically

• Public Affairs materials read like legal materials – with limited external use

Instead:

• Agree ex-ante strategic guardrails

• Define what requires formal sign-off and how this will work

• Empower Public Affairs to operate within these established guardrails

This builds trust and speed — two essentials in policy engagement (especially today).

3. Integrate Public Affairs into Business Planning Cycles

When Public Affairs sits in Legal, it can become detached from commercial planning and the organisation more generally which is a mistake. The strongest GC-led Public Affairs functions:

• Feed political risk and opportunity into annual planning

• Quantify regulatory-policy exposure where possible

• Provide scenario planning to strategy teams

• Connect policy developments to P&L implications

• Elevate Public Affairs as a clear and separate section in internal reporting and planning (i.e. do not bury it in the legal section)

A GC can uniquely champion this integration — particularly when speaking the language of risk-adjusted growth and downside mitigation.

4. Protect Proactive Public Affairs Work

Legal functions are often overloaded. In periods of cost pressure, proactive Public Affairs work is frequently the first to be cut. I see this all the time. This short-termism — what I call the ‘Public Affairs tap effect’ — assumes influence can be turned off and on without consequence. Reactive policy defense is expensive and reputation-intensive. Proactive engagement, although harder to quantify, often prevents larger downstream exposure.

As GC, ask:

• What are our 3 proactive policy priorities this year?

• What would be the cost of inaction?

• What continuity is required to sustain influence?

Protecting a portion of Public Affairs capacity for proactive work is one of the most strategic decisions a GC can make.

5. Elevate Reporting Beyond Activity Metrics

If Public Affairs reports into Legal, its reporting should not be activity-led:

• Number of meetings

• Briefings produced

• Events attended

Instead, require reporting around:

• Objective progress

• Policy trajectory shifts

• Risk mitigation scenarios

• Stakeholder positioning analysis

• Financial exposure where possible

• Commercial opportunity and risk

When reporting becomes business-relevant, Public Affairs credibility rises — and so does Legal’s standing as a strategic enabler.

Another thing that I see frequently is that structure and reporting lines matter (really matter) but so too does culture. Legal and Public Affairs can become a critical strategic partner for any organisation – if the GC can get the balance right.

A Final Reflection for General Counsels

In today’s political and policy environment — characterized by volatility, speedy decision-making and heightened stakeholder scrutiny — Public Affairs is not a peripheral function. It is strategic infrastructure for any organisation. When Public Affairs sits in Legal, the General Counsel becomes more than a risk manager. You become:

• A steward of external positioning

• A translator between law and policy

• A guardian of long-term license to operate

Done well, this structure can be powerful but it requires conscious leadership from the GC to not operate Public Affairs as an extension of the compliance function – but to treat is as a strategic partner for the organisation.