Eduardo Hirano

In-house lawyers have the potential to significantly impact a business by becoming valuable business partners. They can leverage their legal knowledge to support the company in designing strategies that align with the unique aspects of the business model and organizational culture. However, the biggest challenge lies in transitioning into a business partner role and getting involved in business matters, as lawyers typically specialize in legal affairs and may lack expertise in other areas.

To become effective business partners, lawyers should understand their customers, learn about their operations, identify their most sensitive pain points, stay ahead of their needs, and provide efficient recommendations to overcome challenges. By doing so, they can earn recognition as valuable business partners.

Yet, achieving this expectation can be even more challenging for the Legal Team, given that most in-house lawyers specialize in laws and regulations related to the business but may not be familiar with other critical areas such as marketing, finance, sales, product development, and IT, among others.

To address this situation, the Legal Team should adopt a proactive attitude, closely monitor the company’s activities, take a holistic approach, connect various departments, and provide actionable legal recommendations that foster the most suitable business structure while mitigating legal risks.

To become recognized and effective business partners, here are ten crucial points for in-house lawyers to consider:

1. Know Your Company and Its Business: The Legal Team, along with all other departments, should have a comprehensive understanding of the company’s essence, purpose, culture, values, strengths, weaknesses, main competitors, and industry trends. This knowledge will enable the Legal Department to better plan and support the creation of disruptive business strategies. Researching, read reviews, newsletters, reach out to pears and attend information sections provide by the company are good ways to learn more about the company.

2. Know Your Customer: It is vital for in-house lawyers to understand their internal clients and stakeholders. They should seek clear communication by direct asking clients to explain their main goals, relevant internal procedures, pain points, and how they expect legal support. This open communication fosters synergy, creates empathy, and strong partnerships.

3. Leverage Legal Knowledge: In-house lawyers should use their legal expertise to find alternative ways for the company to operate within the bounds of the law. By understanding the company’s targets, culture, and business processes, the Legal Team can contribute to problem-solving and risk assessment. Inhouse should communicate clearly, precisely, and concisely, without jargon or overly complex language. They should consider the level of legal expertise of the receiver, adapt the language and level of detail accordingly. The most important thing is offering guidance on possible courses of action based on legal analysis.

4. Align with Company Goals (OKRs): The Legal Team, along with other areas of the company, must work towards achieving the company’s overall goals and targets. Aligning the Legal Department’s Objective Key Results (OKRs) with the company’s objectives ensures that efforts are focused on shared purposes across the organization. It is a powerful way to enhance communication, collaboration, and accountability.

5. Monitor Performance (KPIs): The Legal Manager should define and select the best Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track legal activities, ensuring that the team’s efforts are appropriately allocated. Sharing these indicators with everyone involved, including main stakeholders and top management, fosters collaboration and engagement.

6. Design Effective Contracts: Contracts provide stability and predictability for business engagements. The Legal Team should support other areas in obtaining what they need, all important points must be described in the contract such as timely delivery, quality, quantity, and expected costs, with minimal risk or liability. Clear and simple contract language, understanding sensitive activities, and designing rational problem-solving methods contribute to an effective contract.

7. Manage Litigation Efficiently: Efficient litigation management contributes to service development, reduces product liabilities, and better controls contingencies. The Legal Team must have control over litigation processes, whether the company is suing or being sued, by understanding the purpose, cost, consequences, and potential side effects. Litigation can generate an extensive volume of data. Efficiently managing litigation also involves establishing a database, which can serve as a valuable resource for extracting meaningful insights to facilitate data-driven decision-making.

8. Foster Teamwork: All members of the Legal Department should work together as a team. The Legal Manager plays a crucial role in integrating team members, understanding their motivations, offering feedback, and encouraging the development of both soft and hard skills. Engaging law firms is equally important to align all service providers with the company’s vision.

9. Prioritize Customer Experience: The Legal Team should provide a positive customer experience. Clients should easily access and receive legal support through a straightforward and logical workflow. User-friendly documents and visual law can aid in transferring legal information, considering the receivers’ background and seniority level.

10. Publicize Achievements: After putting in hard work, it is essential to share the outcomes to increase recognition and foster collaboration with other areas. The Legal Team should highlight tangible value-added contributions such as cost savings, contingency reduction, number of contracts created, litigations handled, and credit recovery. Additionally, sharing intangible benefits, such as synergy with other areas, customer satisfaction, procedural benefits, low turnover, automation, innovation, and creativity, enhances the department’s credibility while spreading legal knowledge.

By following these tips, in-house lawyers can evolve into valuable business partners, offering strategic recommendations, risk assessment, cost estimation, and timeframes to support their customers in achieving their goals. The ultimate goal is to make legal support effective and impactful for the overall success of the company.

Note that the ideas and recommendations in this article are based on the professional background and experience of the author, and no artificial intelligence was used to produce the contents.