The search for a general counsel, though, had been commissioned by the CFO, who was politically powerful within the company, and who wanted the GC to report to him. I told the headhunter that, especially because this was a public company, in my view the job would have to report either directly to the board, or to the CEO with a dotted line to the board; I explained why.

The headhunter said he thought that would be a problem but would check. He later let me know that what I'd said had killed the CFO's interest in me. I later saw in the paper that they'd hired someone else, who was reporting to the CFO. Best of luck to them.

This needs to be in bold 72-point font. Corporate behaviour aligns with corporate structure, and if the General Counsel is subordinate to the Chief Financial Officer, complying with the law will inevitably be secondary to making money.

If you want to avoid jail time, you should either have General Counsel reporting to the CEO or General Counsel / Chief Legal Officer appointed by and reporting to the board.

In fact, my pops did the illustrations for the entire series. Microsoft Press was one of his favorite clients back in the day. Growing up, he'd tell me stories of disorganized secretaries at Microsoft sending him awful reference photos, so he'd look up the execs in the phonebook and call them at home. Sometimes he'd get their wives/husbands on the phone, and he'd nicely explain that he was an artist, and would they mind if he borrowed the family photo album? Many fine stories from those cases, too.

Somewhat ironically, my dad never learned how to do art on a computer. Now he's a commercial construction inspector in Seattle.