Behind every great company is a great law department. A highly experienced legal advisor, backed by a team of dedicated legal professionals, is usually leading that department.
Building and maintaining a successful legal department is challenging. It takes business acumen, industry knowledge, strategic focus and most importantly, leadership skills.
At the Global Women’s Leadership Summit panel, “Guiding the Present, Shaping the Future: Developing Strategies to Build and Lead Law Departments,” several of the nation’s top GCs discussed what makes their legal departments successful.
One of the first attributes to a highly functional legal department mentioned during the discussion was diversity. “It’s a given that we hire people that are experienced lawyers and knowledgeable about the industry,” on panelist noted. “But we make sure we have a team of diverse practitioners who bring the best ideas and legal counsel to the table.” Creating an environment of inclusion, they agreed, is essential.
Attitude and resilience are also critical to leading and working within legal departments. For senior in-house counsel, every day brings new challenges—often unexpected ones—and the most successful lawyers are those who adapt. They don’t get frustrated but, rather, react quickly and move forward.
Doing more with less is a significant challenge many general counsel have been dealing with for years. To handle reduced budget and resources, one panelist suggested prioritizing the most important legal matters on which to focus and delegating lower priority work to junior-level or contract lawyers.
Another speaker often gives her in-house lawyers a line-of-sight into the budget so they understand how much certain matters cost and can better respect the confines of the legal spend. All the panelists agreed that training the internal clients on the legal priorities may help reduce the work load and minimize cost.
Finally, stepping away from the email and meeting face-to-face with senior management and other stakeholders in the business fosters collaboration.
“Really get to know people in the organization,” one panelist said. “There is no substitute for sitting down and having a conversation about the organization and aligning goals.”