“So, What’s Your Job for the Summer?” What a Lawyer Can Learn from Diane Court.

An element of providing quality legal advice timely is understanding the business objective. 

In the movie Say Anything, the female lead character, Diane Court, asks Lloyd Dobler a simple question – “So, what’s your job this summer.”  It’s a simple, direct question.  It generates a simple direct response.  “Job? Being a great date.”   

It is simple to ask the business partner and understand “What’s your job this summer?”  Or this quarter.  Or this year. 

Lawyers often jump right into being a lawyer and forget to look up, touch base with the business, and make sure they are aligned with the businessperson’s job for the summer, the quarter, or the year.  Sometimes, the lawyer assumes they know (and we know what happens with assumptions).  Sometimes, the lawyer asked once but hasn’t asked often enough to understand that the business strategy or objectives have changed.

How to get started?  My team of in-house lawyers called their internal customers and ask six basic questions that we modified from Kimberly Janson book, Demystifying Talent Management (2015).

•  What are your objectives in the next year in your job?
•  What are you being held accountable for in the next year?
•  How can I, as the lawyer working with you, help you meet these objectives mentioned in response to questions 1 and 2?
• What do you need more of from me as the lawyer working with you?
• What do you need less of from me as the lawyer working with you?
• If, at the end of the year, you were to rank me (a lawyer) as your most valuable partner in meeting your objectives, what would have happened during the year to justify that ranking?

Would you like help to discover ways to help your team to ask the right questions to help better understand the business they support?  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.

The Four Pillars of an In-House Law Department

Why do companies have their own law departments?  It is an important question for leaders of law departments to ask themselves and their teams.  It is an important question for in-house or want-to-be in-house lawyers to understand.  However, it is a question that is not asked nearly enough.

Do a quick Google search for why companies have law departments.  You will find legal websites that say various versions of “to provide preventative legal management,” “to help the business avoid costly mistakes,” or to avoid punitive impacts of decisions made without legal counsel.”  These answers are framed from a risk mitigation or risk elimination perspective.

You will also find websites that approach the question from the business’s side.  They say things like “be a trusted partner to the business,” “help the business understand legal risks as we make decisions,” “be a key resource,” and “help create parameters within which the business can operate.”

In conversations with lots of chief legal officers and general counsel as well as business people who rely on their law departments, the aims of an in-house law department distill down to about four pillars:

·   Quality legal advice timely. 

·    Position the business for positive outcomes. 

·    Develop people. 

·    Cost effectiveness.

Need some help thinking about the application of these pillars to your law department?  Watch for more posts.  And, second, let’s talk.