Why the General Counsel May Be Your Best AI Strategy Leader

Most enterprise AI strategies fail at execution, not conception. According to a Sedgwick survey of Fortune 500 executives, 70% have formed AI risk committees — but only 14% report being fully prepared for deployment. Eric Dodson Greenberg, chief legal officer at Cox Media Group, argues the fix is structural: put the general counsel in charge.

The conventional model has IT leading, committees advising, and everyone weighing in. That produces strategies that live in slide decks and die in execution. Greenberg's case for GC-led AI governance isn't about legal being a defensive function. It's about what the role structurally brings: cross-functional authority, regulatory fluency, stakeholder accountability, and the organizational credibility to move from policy to practice.

"We talk about AI for hours and make no decisions" — that's the summary one Fortune 50 senior executive gave of her company's AI committee experience. The data backs her frustration.

Key Takeaways:

• AI committees create the appearance of governance without delivering it. Structured GC leadership replaces committee diffusion with a single accountable owner.
• Legal's role in AI is not purely defensive. The GC brings regulatory awareness, cross-functional reach, and a mandate that sits above departmental interests — making it better positioned than IT alone to govern enterprise-wide AI deployment.
• The integrated legal-IT model may not fit every organization, but for companies where AI risk and AI opportunity are equally significant, the GC is a systematically underweighted option.

Read the full article on Corporate Compliance Insights