A pronounced narrowing just below the top creates a distinct shoulder on the south-west side, and that detail, combined with the stone's imposing height and roughly rectangular form, gives it a quietly unnerving human silhouette. The effect is more likely accidental than intentional, but it is difficult to stand in front of it and not see a figure.

The stone, a relatively thin slab, no more than 0.28 metres thick, is aligned along a north-east to south-west axis and sits on a limestone knoll that commands wide views in every direction. To the east and south, the long ridge of the Ox Mountains fills the skyline; to the west-south-west, the summit of Nephin rises in the distance. The knoll was quarried for limestone at various points in the past, and a small ruined limekiln, the circular stone-built kind once used to burn limestone into agricultural lime, survives just five metres to the south-west. A lake called Lough Lauravally, now largely dried up, sits about a hundred metres to the north-west. The stone itself was traditionally known as Legaun or Legawn, a name recorded in the Office of Public Works topographical files, though the monument does not appear on the 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map; it was marked simply as "Standing Stone" by the 1922 edition. Past disturbance to the ground around the base has left it tilting to the north-west and standing on a low stony pedestal, its lichen-covered surface worn by centuries of exposure on that open, elevated knoll.