1. Learn the Business: What are your clients’ daily challenges?
2. Be a Partner: Don’t just identify problems – solve them.
3. Deliver Great Work: Empathize and prioritize.
4. Communicate: What’s the bottom line?
5. Build Relationships: Networking still counts for in-house lawyers.
6. Manage: Start by managing staff or integrating new lawyers.
7. Watch the Pennies: You’re part of a cost center.
8. Diversify: Get out of your comfort zone.
1. Learn the Business
§ Resist complacency.
§ Learn about the industry and competitive landscape.
§ Read competitors’ proxy statements, 10-K’s, 10-Q’s, etc.
§ Learn the basics of revenue recognition and what the hot buttons are for your industry segment.
§ Understand the gross margins of your company’s products and the features that distinguish them.
§ Express to clients your desire to understand the company’s core business.
§ Visit the centers of operation and learn about clients’ daily challenges.
§ Volunteer to attend client meetings and participate in strategy development.
§ Learn how employees get their information and how management practices what it preaches.
§ Leverage e-mail and other communications methods to stay aligned with and informed by clients.
2. Become a Business Partner and Trusted Advisor
§ Find solutions to problems within the legal framework – don’t just identify them.
§ “Most clients want their in-house lawyers to give them a good answer today and not a perfect one next week, unless they really need a perfect answer.”
§ EXERCISE YOUR GOOD JUDGMENT AND COMMON SENSE: Anticipate the consequences of decisions beyond the legal department.
§ Be proactive by helping clients understand the legal environment in which they operate:
- Develop and offer training on laws and regulations.
- Early Warning System: create a process for identifying and reporting on legal risks.
- Contribute to and review business plans and policy creation.
- Assist with developing compliance procedures.
- Solicit regular feedback from the business team on internal legal department and outside counsel performance.
§ Service mentality: the goal is empathy.
- Meet deadlines.
- Return phone calls and e-mail promptly.
- Update clients regularly.
- Share a sense of urgency.
- Be willing to “do windows.”
- Deliver to the business what you expect from outside counsel.
3. Deliver Outstanding Legal Work
§ Exceed expectations – legal competence is a minimum.
§ Maintain and develop your skills, and attend conferences and seminars to stay current.
§ Provide sage legal and business advice.
§ Triage: learn to juggle a dynamic workload and prioritize the most urgent matters according to the needs of clients.
4. Communicate in Business Language
§ Successful in-house lawyers speak in plain English. Warren Buffett’s introduction to A Plain English Handbook advises to “write documents as though you are writing to your sister.” For more information, see http://www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf .
§ Your client only needs to know how to stay in the safe harbor or what you think are the major exposures in a lawsuit. They have neither the time nor the desire to learn the law.
§ Always describe the business impact of your advice.
§ Distill complexity in order to articulate concepts to all audiences from the plant manager to the CEO.
§ Remember that your client wants an answer in order to make a decision.
5. Build Internal Relationships
§ Get out of the office:
- Be visible in the organization and make sure your “fan club” is diversified.
- Network internally by taking clients to breakfast and lunch and attending company social events.
- Network externally by being known in your field of expertise.
§ Participate on internal committees that provide an opportunity to work with other departments.
§ Ask for feedback from your clients.
§ Speak up if you win something, whether it’s a trial or a successful result in a large transaction. Let others know you and the legal department have scored a point for the company.
