About GCN

General Counsel Netherlands (GCN) is the modern professional organisation and creative knowledge network for ultimate responsible (in-house) lawyers in the Netherlands. It is the platform where General Counsel from a wide range of companies meet, help each other and share knowledge.

GCN is the knowledge centre for and by GCs and for everyone who cares about General Counsel. In addition, GCN is actively working on making General Counsel more society-wide visible.

General Counsel have a unique position within companies and face great challenges. They are the confidants of the Executive Board and various supervisory authorities, sometimes also acting as Company Secretaries.

At the same time, GCs support the business in large projects. At the crossroads between strategy and operations, they know better than anyone what is going on. As companies continue to transform and innovate, they are increasingly addressing issues such as cybersecurity, globalisation, privacy, ESG and reputation management, in addition to managing legal risks.

They also have a department to manage. The multitude of responsibilities makes the job popular and at the same time complex. No one understands this better than other General Counsel. Within GCN, various GCs and GCN Partners help each other with tips & tricks to make the job more successful.

Personal

GCN organises a range of activities. Core values are: quality, informal, confidential, an inclusive mindset and personal. GCN is not an anonymous network where participants are numbers. Everything must be right and participants must enjoy coming back again.

That is why GCN Congresses are not a list of boring keynotes, but dynamic days filled with self-selected GCN Roundtables, personal introductions and informal meetings. Also, the dozens of GCN Peer-to-Peer group meetings that take place across the country ensure that participants quickly get to know many other General Counsel.

The GCN Benchmark Surveys have been the guide for GCs in the Netherlands for many years. If you have a specific question, the team will help you directly in person. We can be reached every day.

From left to right: Linda de Heer, Melanie Maas and Michiel van Straaten

The GCN team

Michiel van Straaten

Community Chair

+31 6 14837202
michiel.vanstraaten@generalcounsel.nl

Linda de Heer

Community Manager

+31 6 48503893
linda.deheer@generalcounsel.nl

Melanie Maas

Program manager

+31 6 14837202
michiel.vanstraaten@generalcounsel.nl

General Counsel Academy

Since 2016, the GCN Team has been active within sister organisation General Counsel Academy (GCA) (www.generalcounsel.eu) with English-language academic Business courses for General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers. Whereas GCN, as a professional organisation and knowledge network, focuses exclusively on chief legal officers working in the Netherlands, GCA’s Business training courses target GCs and CLOs from all over the world. To this end, we work closely with several professors from the Rotterdam School of Management / Erasmus University and other professors and experts from the Netherlands and abroad. Instead of becoming better lawyers, the General Counsel Academy courses help you become better leaders and ‘trusted business advisors’ at CEO level. The GCA Executive Program is the General Counsel Academy’s core programme. During an intensive week, a group of up to 22 GCs/CLOs dives into an intensive learning experience at the highest possible level on Business Management and the future of General Counsel. We also organise several shorter Business Courses: the GCA Executive Courses.