A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States. The status and prominence of the general counsel has grown much over the past 10 years as is evidenced by the large number of lawyers who come into the role from private practice.

In the United Kingdom a group of general counsel, called the GC100, was officially launched on 9 March 2005 and brings together the senior legal officers of more than eighty five FTSE 100 companies. The GC100 group was created in response to the increasing volume and complexity of domestic and international law and regulation which impacts on UK listed companies. The group was formed with the support of Practical Law Company which acts as its secretariat.

The main objectives of the GC100 are to:

Membership of the GC100 is by invitation only. At the AGM on the 16 January 2007 members voted in favour of extending membership to company secretaries as well as general counsel in the FTSE 100. The formal name of the GC100 is now "The Association of General Counsel and Company Secretaries of the FTSE100", although it will continue to be known as the GC100.

Michelle A. Rhee (Korean: 이양희;I Yang-hui; born December 25, 1969) is a public figure involved in the American education system. She was chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools from 2007 to 2010. In late 2010, she founded StudentsFirst, a non-profit, tax-exempt political advocacy organization which works on education reform issues such as ending teacher tenure.

She began her career by teaching for three years in an inner city school, then founded and ran The New Teacher Project, which in ten years recruited and trained more than 23,000 new teachers to work in urban schools.

Rhee was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the second of three children of South Korean immigrants Shang Rhee, a physician, and Inza Rhee, a clothing store owner. She was raised in the Toledo, Ohio area and educated in the public schools, through the sixth grade. Her parents then sent her to South Korea to attend school for one year. Upon her return, they enrolled her in a private school because they felt the public school was lacking.