A working party has been set up to thrash out a draft protocol for UK and European general counsel.

The group, which was established at the Global Legal Forum, will build on a draft protocol drawn up by Andrew Gallagher, the deputy general counsel of BAE Systems, which was published in Legal Week on 10 June.

The initiative is being led by Gallagher along with Philip Bramwell, general counsel and company secretary at mm02, and Laurie Adams, global head of legal and compliance at ABN Amro.

The protocol will cover the status of general counsel, where lawyers should sit in a company to ensure effective corporate governance and how to balance the interests of the company with the duties of a lawyer as an independent adviser.

"The title 'general counsel' is a US title and the position of general counsel at the top of Fortune 200 companies is very clearly established," Bramwell told delegates. "Over here the titles that we use are horribly fragmented, as are the job descriptions themselves.

We as a group of senior professional practitioners are lamentably poorly organised in terms of communicating to our client bases and our prospective clients, boards, chief executives of companies that do not yet have a general counsel, what it is that we are doing."

Also on the working party are Finbarr Murphy, group legal adviser at Bank of Ireland, Peter Kennerley, company secretary at Scottish & Newcastle, and Andrew Garard, group general counsel at Cable & Wireless.

E-mail: mary.mullally@ legalweek.com for further details of the project.