My first blog post asked the question, “Why do companies have their own legal departments.” Embedded in that question is does a company need a law department. The lawyerly answer is, “it depends.”
You are a big multinational company, and S&P 500
company, and the like, which means you probably already have a law
department. Your company is big and
probably generates lots of legal issues.
So, it’s a given that you have a legal department.
There are still some big questions for these in-house legal departments. Do you have the right number of lawyers? Are you balancing internal lawyer costs with outside options? Do you really need a fourth lawyer, or do you need three in-house lawyers and some external support? Is it better to pay hourly for that external support or use a subscription-based model that gives you more certainty on your monthly spend and may well be cheaper than the all-in costs of an additional attorney?
You are a smaller company or business, asking should I have an in-house team. You may not be ready for an in-house lawyer,
much less a law department. Or what you
want is a unicorn to be your in-house lawyer. What's a unicorn? You are looking for a lawyer that is 20% corporate, 20% commercial contract
expert, 10% IP expert, and so on. Here
is a recent LinkedIn job listing for a general counsel:
“You will have proven business savvy and strategic vision,
as well as experience with commercial contracts, corporate governance, finance,
privacy, marketing, regulatory/legal compliance matters, labor and employment,
litigation management, and intellectual property management (protection of
trademarks, brands).”
You get the point. A hard to find unicorn.
Maybe your needs are different than you think. Perhaps you are stuck thinking about the law firm model where you have to pay different lawyers different hourly rates to cover all these legal bases. Or, maybe you should find a subscription-based firm that gives you access to experts in all these areas, serves as your general counsel, gets to know your business – and may even be cheaper than salary and benefits for a unicorn – if you can even find one.