Useless Advice Is Like No Advice

As a puppy associate at a major law firm, I was sent to California to work on some discovery from a third party to the litigation.  While there, I was able to have dinner with a friend from law school who had moved back home to become one of the early lawyers for a small company called Yahoo.  The dinner conversation turned to our respective jobs.  “You big firm lawyers drive me crazy,” he said.  “I ask for help on an issue and I get a thirty-page memorandum back telling me ‘on the one hand,’ ‘on the other hand’, and ‘on the third hand’.  That doesn’t get me any closer to helping my clients inside the company make a decision.”

What my friend was really saying is that lawyers must be able to evaluate risk, prioritize risk, and help the client in a way that would permit him to make a decision.  He wanted his outside counsel to say something like the following.

“We’ve looked to your issue.  There are three risks we see.  The first one has a 10 percent chance of being an issue and you can probably ignore it.  The second one has a 50 percent chance, and you need to decide whether you can tolerate that risk.  The third issue is the one we need to focus on because it has an 80 percent chance of arising.”  This example is admittedly simple.  The response might also evaluate the size of the risk in addition to the likelihood.  That issue with a 10 percent chance of arising might be a break the company issue and my friend would want to know that.

Nevertheless, the point is this.  To provide quality legal advice timely, the legal advice must be actionable by the client.  Otherwise, the client is no closer to decisions that move the business along.

Recently in response to one of my blogs, a follower sent me a note. 

“I remember a few years ago when you emphasized the speed of the advice. As a frequent user of in house legal advice, that is still important. My recent frustration has been around actionable and executable advice. It seems that I am often explaining that our options are A or B due to a system limitations or [another] constraint, and the only advice I get is we need to do C.  Similarly, there is a moving goalpost phenomenon in which the better the data I present gets or the larger sample size I gather my law . . . colleagues raise the requirements. They seemingly ignore that we have operated with far weaker or smaller sample sized for decades. It almost disincentives progress on my end.“  

Yep, advice that is not in-line with the business constraints is another example of advice that is neither actionable nor executable by the business.  In effect, this person has experienced his or her law department saying “no” in a lot of words (when no is not the only answer) rather than working to an actionable solution.  It is a disincentive to his or her business progress, and it may well be a disincentive to asking law questions in the future.

Need help coaching your legal team to think like the business and avoid useless advice?  Let’s talk.

Partner v. Partner!

Businesses recruit lawyers to work inside the company by selling themselves as providing different opportunities and experiences than law firms.  Lawyers are attracted to in-house jobs for several reasons, including: (1) work on highly interesting legal matters and be embedded in and part of the business; (2) no timesheets to track every six, or ten, minute increments of the lawyer’s time the way that law firms do; and (3) the work-life balance is different/better than compared to law firms.

It is important for those transitioning from the pursuit of partner at a law firm (or indeed partnership itself) to an in-house role to understand that there is more of a change than just the benefits of these three major differences. An element of providing quality legal advice timely is becoming a partner to the business. 

Lawyers often lateral into the company from a law firm and keep doing what they have been doing.  Law firm lawyers are hired guns.  They are retained for a specific matter, contract, issue, or litigation.  They parachute in, try to learn a little about the business as it relates to that specific matter, contract, issue, or litigation, and provide counsel.  And then they move on to the next matter.

If the law firm model of a lawyer were what the business needed, it could just keep using a law firm.  An in-house law department is not a law firm inside the company.  It comprises the company’s lawyers.  If they have invested the thought into bringing a lawyer in-house, it should expect more from that lawyer.  These lawyers must immersed in the business.  They must become partners to the business.  Provide legal advice within the constraints of what the business can do.  They must be solution seekers and problems solvers.  They must be adept at prioritizing risks; not all risks are equal.  Although hard for some lawyers, they must be willing to take on or to accept some risks.  In short, there are major differences.  Reframing that mindset is an important part of being a best-in-class legal department. 

The trick, however, is for lawyers making the transition from a law firm to an in-house role to understand that the jobs are different.  The lawyer who is interested in the business and willing to leave the combine their legal training with the more freewheeling and riskier elements of business will make the most contributions and add the most value.  Remember that you are moving from the partner track or the partner life at a firm to a role that demands that you become an integral partner to the business.

And, if you are a law firm that seeks to be a strategic partner, almost all these observations apply to you as well.

Need help thinking about reframing your partnership with the business or culture of your law department?  Let’s talk.

Quality Legal Advice Timely

 

There are two major elements to the first pillar of a law department -- quality legal advice timely.  First, businesspeople want quality legal advice on which they can rely.  Second, they want it timely.

Quality -  

The easy part of quality is that internal customers want the legal advice to be correct and the result of the lawyer’s knowledge, expertise, understanding of the business objective, and best judgment applying the law and expertise to the facts. 

There are other elements as well.  There is becoming a partner to the business.  There is making sure the advice is understandable and actionable by the business; the advice must be useful.  There is having a reputation as a problem solver and solution seeks, not just the person who calls balls and strikes like an umpire by saying -- “yes, you can do that” or “no, you can’t do that”. There is clarity in communication – both written and oral communication – and effective listening to understand the business objective, constraints, and opportunities. 

Timely –

No one wants a tortoise for a lawyer.  So, the in-house lawyer must understand the demands of the business and the time-constraints.  The lawyer must set reasonable expectations as to what they can do and by when.  But the bottom-line is that business moves fast.  Opportunities present themselves and then are gone.  Good in-house lawyers, particularly those working with commercial groups, must understand that their delay could cause the business to miss the opportunity.  And that isn’t good.

It's not enough to provide quality advice late.  And its not good to provide bad advice on time.  Both are musts.