By Sarah Davis
An in-house colleague of mine told me that he was known as Sales Prevention Officer in one of the businesses he worked for. And he is certainly not the only lawyer to have been saddled with that reputation. Businesses can often see the legal department as the blocker – a necessary but aggravating barrier to cross before they can achieve what they want.
Is this fair? Not at all. In my experience, lawyers are consistently problem solvers and solution bearing. They work hard to deliver the business’s goals whilst balancing the legal and compliance requirements that govern operations.
So, whilst I acknowledge that it is neither a legitimate nor true reflection of the role of an in-house lawyer, it nevertheless cannot be ignored. Perception is a reality you have to engage with.
In this blog, I want to explore a bit more why our colleagues may think like this, and to offer some advice about how to reframe your relationship with the business. Achieving this successfully will get you a seat at the table, giving you the opportunity to contribute to strategy from the outset, add maximum value to your organisation and finally schlep off the unfair reputation of being the ‘can’t do’ department.
What do your colleagues think you do?
Traditionally, legal might have been viewed as some separate function to be consulted on an ad-hoc basis, out of necessity and because it can no longer be avoided.
Though colleagues may appreciate that your task-based activities are aligned with the business goals, the role is seen predominantly as service delivery. You can be plugged in and turned off when other people in the business think they need legal advice. This is problematic! Often coming too late, you can be left fighting fires that wouldn’t be blazing if you’d had a meaningful contribution at the beginning.
How do you reframe that perception?
How do you get colleagues to see you as the team that makes it happen? How do you transition from being a gate keeper to a business partner – a term that I believe perfectly reflects the evolution that has taken place in the in-house lawyer’s role and encapsulates its relationship with the business.
Critically, you need to be intentional about changing the way you work with the business. Be intentional about change.
Start by questioning – do this as an exercise with your team or if you are a sole in-house, work with your external counsel to help you think about these questions:
- What does it mean to be a true business partner?
- What are the behaviours entailed in being a business partner?
- How do you ensure you’re brought in early and involved in strategic decision making?
- How do you secure a seat on key management committees?
- How can you start delivering solutions and not just doling out pieces of advice?
- How can you help the business manage increasing regulatory complexity?
What works?
Good in-house lawyers do far more than just manage risk. This is far too narrow a scope to cover all the other ways that we support the creation of revenue and growth. So, how do you communicate this to the business to bring about that perception change? What works?
Get structured feedback
Healthy relationships embrace feedback, so ask key stakeholders in the business for their views. How else will you really know what your colleagues think about you and your team? And how will you know what they want from their relationship with legal? Don’t work from assumptions. Ask.
Develop ongoing relationships
Unlike external counsel, in-house have the great benefit of being in ongoing relationships with the business. As in-house counsel you understand the context in which your business is operating. Through your relationships you understand the personal drivers and motivations of your colleagues. Demonstrating both empathy and contextual understanding in your
relationships with colleagues, can be the shift from work appearing merely transactional, to being experienced as a more wholistic and strategic input.
Offer substance and judgement
Legal teams have a deep knowledge of the business. This creates the advantage of bringing judgement to bear on more than just the legal answer. Think about ways in which you can communicate commercial solutions – ones that are not purely legal. And extend this to your team – try to empower them to feel able to do this too.
Get involved earlier
Early involvement is the key to embedding robust processes in the business and creating workable, mutually beneficial, long-term contracts with staff, customers and suppliers. If you feel that you are often involved later down the line than you’d like, how can you change that?
Some of this may be about process. Is there a clear process in place for engaging legal? One size doesn’t fit all, but this can be as simple as an intake form, where you get to set the information fields you want to know. Here, common standards might work across the global team.
Some of this is also about relationships – about leading with your curiosity not your knowledge. If you are interested in what your colleagues are doing and share an interest in their work, they will be encouraged to bring initiatives to you and to seek your input.
Promote autonomy
Think about ways that you can give your colleagues greater autonomy with certain contracts. Perhaps you can create a self-service legal portal or deliver training to different teams to help them assess acceptable risk levels themselves.
Though it may sound counterintuitive to remove legal from procedures when you are looking for greater inclusion in the business, it will serve to streamline processes and help remove the perception that progress stops with the legal team. And importantly, it will free up your time from more low value transactional work to enable you to act as a business partner in the areas and the ways that you want to.
Use metrics
If you’re looking to demonstrate your contribution to the business, figure out how you can use data to track it. How is the benefit you bring measurable? Perhaps you help close business faster, or speed time to revenue. Maybe you improve customer relationships. Being able to communicate demonstrable value-adds to the business will be a good exercise in reputation management for any legal team.
So, there are six areas of focus to help you move from being seen unfairly as the “Can’t Do” department to become an integral part of the business. Even just one of these can help shift the dial.
I had another colleague who use to say going to legal was like “going through Customs”. Our reframing the relationship changed her view to one where she saw us as on the journey with her…
