In-house lawyers bring more to the table than their expert legal skills. In-house lawyers are also known as corporate counsel or in-house counsel. They play a crucial role in providing legal support and guidance within a company. Most companies look for their in-house legal team to partner with their business. In-house lawyers have a lot on their plates and they constantly juggle to meet their clients’ needs, deadlines, and emergencies. To be successful in this role, in-house lawyers should master a diverse set of skills beyond their legal expertise.
Here are some key business skills that all in-house lawyers should master.
1. Basic Finance: Unfortunately, we start here with math. Business speaks language on its own, and that language is numbers. You don’t need to hold an MBA, Finance, or accounts degree but you must possess a certain comfort level with some critical financial concepts. To start with, you should need to know how to read a balance sheet, a profit and loss statement, and a cash flow statement. Further, understand those finance formulas that are most important to the business and learn those. You can refer to a good dictionary of financial formulas and terms.
2. Negotiation: When talking about the list of things they don’t teach you in law school, basic business negotiation skills top the list. But for some or the other reason, everyone just assumes that lawyers are negotiation experts. Negotiation skills must be learned very well by the lawyers. And if you want to be a successful in-house lawyer, you need to know negotiation properly. Not only with the party on the other side but internally as well which is a much harder negotiation. So, here are the five most important things about business negotiation you need to understand:
- Everybody has to get something out of that negotiation: This certainly means it should not be “I win, you lose.” Reaching a balanced decision is always a fair idea for both parties.
- Negotiation is 90% preparation and 10% talking: If you are willing to strike the best deal, you need to understand everything about the deal, including what the other side is expecting from that deal.
- Have a playbook: A simple playbook is a valuable tool since it sets out the key issues and the positions of the parties.
- Take reasoned positions: There should always be an explainable reason for every position in a negotiation. Don’t be that person who only responds with “Why do you need that” or “Because we want it.”
- Nothing is done until it is all done: Be sure that you are clear that while you may have an agreement today on a key point, nothing is final until you see how everything looks in a picture at the end of the negotiation. There are high chances that you might have to re-trade on something you have already agreed upon.
3. Business Writing: Once you move in-house, forget almost everything they taught you about legal writing in law school and at the law firm. When you are translating those high-quality legal thoughts to paper or e-mails, you need to understand the following things:
- Your audience doesn’t care about legal issues and their attention to legal terms would be very low. So, keep it short, and straight to the point, and put the answers upfront.
- Do not use the legal jargon, the Latin maxims, the footnotes, citations, and your love for multiple legal theories.
- Keep things simple. Don’t assume they know what you’re talking about and bring things down to the level of your audience so they can understand you. The goal is clarity, so aim for that.
4. Delegation: Delegation here is about teaching someone to do the work you have already mastered and allows the delegee to learn the new skill and enhance their value to the legal department. Here are the key points:
- Determine what you want to delegate, and it must be the work you have likely mastered.
- Give clear instructions on what needs to be done.
- Set up check-in points, so it becomes easy for you to monitor progress and work quality.
- Review the work they provide you and provide them constructive feedback.
5. Project Management: Lawyers are pretty good at managing projects. Project management helps to ensure that the project is delivered on time, on budget, and as promised. By planning and implementing project management, all in-house lawyers can benefit from learning the basics of project management. The key steps that can turn your task into a well-oiled machine include Kick-off meetings, planning the project, executing the project, monitoring the project, change management, and corrective measures that need to be taken.
6. Soft Skills: Legal skills are essential, but those only get you in the door. To be a successful in-house lawyer, you must identify and master the right soft skills and bring those to the office with you every day. Businesses might not be able to rate how good you are with your legal knowledge, but they will surely be able to measure, analyze, and evaluate your soft skills. And that is why, soft skills are very important for being a successful in-house lawyer. A few critical soft skills to focus on include Active listening, Curiosity, Communication skills, Emotional intelligence, a Sense of humor, working well under pressure, etc.
7. Analytical Thinking: This is another major skill where law schools fall short. The demand for in-house lawyers to become strategic partners to the business is on the rise. The problem occurs when no one teaches you how to analyze, and most in-house counsels are left on their own devices to figure it out. Here are some key areas to focus on to develop critical thinking skills:
- Learn the business; i.e., their business operation, the marketplace, and most importantly the company’s strategic goals and objectives for the next several years.
- Sharpen your financial knowledge.
- Develop relations with the business.
- Volunteer for strategic projects.
- Look at the problems like a businessperson with a law degree, rather than looking at them with the eye of a lawyer.
8. Time Management: In-house lawyers must possess the ability to deal with properly managing their time, prioritizing their work, and avoiding getting stuck in useless meetings and conference calls which is of paramount importance. Time management includes: Learning to truly delegate work, Stopping multitasking, dedicating set times to key projects, Using forms and checklists, Losing the ‘to-do’ list, etc. These ways truly add up and help in achieving time management.
9. Comfort with Technology: Lawyers are uncomfortable with technology which is not a good look when it comes to working in-house. It’s all about speaking the same language as the business and using technology is one of the most effective ways to communicate. So, a legal department that can wow the business with visuals like charts, graphs, and data is a legal department that has instant credibility with the business.
10. Data Analytics: If there is any business skill that is embraced by the business and is highly valued by the business, it is the ability to analyze and use data. This is why, this should be on your list of non-legal skills to develop and start using to enhance the operations of the legal department. There is a lot of in-house lawyers can do with the data, from contract management to running a more efficient legal department.
All in-house counsels must focus on developing in-depth business skills in addition to the legal skills that they already possess, the legal assistance that they provide and bring to the table. No one can master the mentioned list in a month or even a year, it’s a process. Regardless, it is not a matter if you are going to need these skills, it is a matter of when. The earlier you get started, the better!