The Gap Between Legal Expert and Legal Leader with Adrian Moffatt

Adrian has spent over a decade as General Counsel at Ausco Modular and has since expanded into one of the most expansive executive roles in the business, covering legal, HR, IT and property across APAC. Alongside that, he has built a genuinely global following as a voice on in-house legal leadership, and this conversation covers the territory he knows best: what it actually takes to move from senior counsel to general counsel, and why those are fundamentally different jobs.

We get into the story of a deputy GC who was passed over for a role everyone assumed was hers, and what that moment reveals about the gap between technical excellence and executive readiness. Adrian also talks about the communication traps in-house lawyers fall into, why he bans the word no in his team, and how he coaches lawyers to reframe their advice around business decisions rather than legal positions.

Listeners will leave with a clear and honest picture of what the path to general counsel actually demands, and some practical ways to start building it now.