EuropeanGC.com

About

Empowering the legal department

That's the mission of EuropeanGC.com, the knowledge portal for General Counsel in Europe. We do this by creating original and thought-provoking articles and reports that cannot be found elsewhere. As Fred Krebs, president of the Association of Corporate Counsel once said: “The article you published on the whole history and future of the billable hour was the best I have ever read.”

The strength of EuropeanGC.com comes from the collaborative synergy of its co-founders, Patrick Wilkins and Jeffrey Forbes.

Patrick Wilkins is a journalist who began his career with a British national newspaper. In 1994 he began to specialize in reporting on law and legal issues. In 1999 he became the executive editor of Commercial Lawyer. From 2000 until 2009 he was the founder, editor and publisher of The European Lawyer magazine, which was the first legal publication to win the prestigious Queen's Award for Export in Great Britain in 2006. In 2009 he launched European GC, the legal intelligence newsletter dedicated to general counsel across Europe, and the predecessor to EuropeanGC.com.

Jeffrey Forbes is a marketing consultant who began working in the publishing and professional services sectors upon moving to Prague in 1992. From 1998 until 2006 he was the founder and regional chairman of the CEE chapter of the Professional Marketing Forum. Thereafter he founded the Forbes Institute, which specialized in business development training for lawyers in global law firms, and conducted the first in-house counsel surveys in CEE and Russia. He joined EuropeanGC.com in 2011 to lead its expansion as a knowledge portal for general counsel in Europe and beyond.

Wilkins and Forbes have more than 30 years experience in the legal and publishing sectors across Europe. They each have lived abroad, worked internationally, and speak several languages: Wilkins speaks the Queen's English and French, Forbes speaks American English, German, and Czech.

Together they have a unique ability to identify 'a good story' - and run with it. This is what helped them produce their first ground-breaking reports, The Profitable Legal Department and Information Governance For Lawyers.

Join us on LinkedIn

We have set up a group on LinkedIn called European General Counsel Group. The group is for in-house counsel only, either based in Europe, or dealing with matters in European jurisdictions. The group was established to act as a ‘think tank’ to discuss important legal issues and thought-provoking management ideas for General Counsel.

The group was set up exclusively for the high-level exchange of ideas, so there will be no job postings or promotional distractions from non-in-house counsel. As a result of this narrow focus on quality we look forward to many rich and fruitful exchanges between fellow professionals.

The discussions will generally be led by Patrick Wilkins, editor of EuropeanGC.com. Patrick is one of the most respected and well-known journalists in the in-house legal community in Europe. From time to time, the publisher of EuropeanGC.com Jeffrey Forbes, will also initiate discussions.

Go now to the profile page of European General Counsel Group and join us.

It’s all free for GC

EuropeanGC.com is the successor to European GC, which was a legal intelligence newsletter founded and edited by Patrick Wilkins, and dedicated to general counsel across Europe. It contains all of the articles and interviews published in European GC in addition to new content and must-read reports such as The Profitable Legal Department and Information Governance For Lawyers. Transforming from a newsletter to a web-based platform means in-house counsel can now subscribe free-of-charge.

Patrick Wilkins, EditorSince its inception in late 2009 European GC earned a reputation for quality and incisiveness, arguably unequalled in other established legal publications. It was not the biggest publication, but its coverage had always been cutting edge. In concentrating on pricing issues for legal advice at the height of the global crisis, European GC led while others followed. As GianBattista Origoni, senior partner of Italy’s leading firm Gianni Origoni & Grippo commented at that time: “This is today’s information, reaching the heart of the new climate between buyers and sellers.”

Successful reporting

The transformation of European GC has its roots in March 2010 when Wilkins wrote one of the most insightful articles of his career, on how Tom Sager, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at the global chemical giant DuPont, led his in-house legal team to implement a systematic recovery program which paid for the department and still made a profit of $130 million in the previous year.

Jeffrey Forbes, PublisherThis article coined the term ‘The Profitable Legal Department’ which caught the attention of one of its readers, Jeffrey Forbes, Founder and Executive Director of the Forbes Institute based in Prague. This led to a collaboration to produce an in-depth report which for the first time made public DuPont’s story in detail and how they did it. The English language version was licensed to LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell and published in November 2010. It has since become one of the most successful reports they have ever sponsored. The full report can be downloaded free at this site.

The next big idea

No sooner had Wilkins and Forbes submitted the manuscript for The Profitable Legal Department they were busy researching the next topic they felt General Counsel in Europe needed to embrace. Information Governance For Lawyers has now become their latest which can also be downloaded free at EuropeanGC.com. This report led to a new business partnership, with Forbes, who is an American, bringing his international marketing and commercial expertise to transform European GC into an online portal.

EuropeanGC.com continues to lead where others follow, with fresh and thought-provoking original content, to empower the legal department and inform the law firms and solution providers who advise them.