Summary and implications
Over the last three years, we have been surveying and interviewing a number of general counsel and senior in-house lawyers to try and better understand where in-house legal teams sit within their organisations. And, more importantly, where those GCs and their teams would like to be in the future.
We have distilled the results of these discussions into three reports, in each case drawing on the feedback from the in-house community, looking at case studies provided by GCs at different organisations and in different industries and providing some practical tools to try and help in-house legal teams realise their ambitions.
If you would like a copy of our reports, click here. If you would like to discuss the outcome of our discussions, we would be happy to share some of the feedback which either did not make it into the reports or which we have received since – again, please contact Jeremy or Jonathan in the first instance.
What is it all about?
We started with a very simple concept: we thought, as private practice lawyers, that we should get a better understanding about our in-house clients. Not just their core businesses but about how they see themselves and where they fit within their organisations. So we asked a number of GC and other senior in-house counsel about their roles.
Based on this feedback, we broke the role of a GC down into four levels, based on the work undertaken by them (not on seniority within their organisations). We called this the GC value pyramid.
We then went back to our contacts and asked them:
- where is your current role within the pyramid; and
- where would you like it to be in five years' time.
Unsurprisingly, we saw the ambition within in-house teams to increase the importance of their roles within their businesses, moving towards increasing strategic influence with their organisations.
The reports
The outcome was the first of our three reports, "From in-house lawyer to business counsel", which focussed on measuring performance and developing a business plan for the legal function.
The feedback from this first report led us to the second, "Vague about value". The concept was relatively straightforward: in order to achieve the growth in importance, in-house legal teams needed to increase their perceived value within their organisation. The second report looked at how legal teams could increase their value in the eyes of the rest of their organisation.
The journey then continued with our third report, "The Influential GC", which addressed the follow on question: having established where you want to get to and having a road-map to make sure you are properly valued, how do you increase your influence within your organisation?
In each case, the reports include tools to help the busy GC develop this aspect of managing a legal team as well as interviews and tips from the likes of Citibank, Investec Bank, Molson Coors, Qatari Diar Sony mobile Communications and Virgin Care.
What we can do you for you (or your legal team)
Throughout this process, we have adhered to one key principle: "it's all about you". We want to understand what makes in-house legal teams tick. That means we need to listen, first and foremost. What that has given us is broad range of knowledge, thoughts and views from the in-house community. Our team have spoken to, and continue to speak to, GCs and senior in-house counsel on the issues covered in the reports, informing and increasing our understanding of how we can work better with in-house legal teams.
We have discussed the results on conference panels, in informal meetings and at in-house team away-days. We would be happy to discuss the output from this work with any GC or in-house legal team – and, adhering to the same principle with which we started, can promise no hard-sell of Nabarro's services in the process (unless of course you would like to hear that!).
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
