Neo-institutional theory depicts the regulative pillar of institutions, the system of formal laws and punishments, as one of society's most formidable tools for aligning corporate behavior with societal interests. Yet, work in non-market strategy suggests that firms have shifted toward an increasingly strategic (rather than compliant) posture vis a vis their regulative environments, demonstrated through an expanding repertoire of strategies meant to influence, co-opt, or subvert legal and regulatory institutions. While the organization-level incentives for such a shift are straightforward, the political process within firms that would lead internal legal counsel to support this shift is unclear, given lawyers' professional obligations to protect the integrity of legal and regulatory structures. In this paper, we shed light on this process by exploring the ascendency of general counsel to firms' top management teams in the post-SOX "era of compliance" and the relationship between the GC's strategic ascendency and corporate political activity.