It’s no surprise that in-house counsel is often labeled as “Doctor No” for leading with risk mitigation as they advise their growing companies. Going to legal can seem like a “check the box” exercise for many executives who will wait until a strategy is fully formed even to consult legal, as they are reluctant to be shut down. As a result, the legal department is often pigeonholed as reactionary and barred from offering strategic solutions.
To add value, in-house counsel has to offer more than avoidance of regulatory landmines. Regulators are slow to define the compliance landscape (from artificial intelligence to cloning), so there have to be other data points to validate that corporate strategy will be not only profitable but defensible and sustainable. This requires becoming “thought partners” who move at the speed of culture. With the emergence of the Chief Legal Officer (CLO) title, the timing is right for your legal rebrand.
Turning “No” into “Yes And…” with Impactful Data
With a seat at the executive table, CLOs can mitigate risks and identify gaps from a strategy’s inception, ultimately elevating the value of the entire legal department and removing the “Doctor No” stigma.
So how do you pivot from “no” to “yes and,” regardless of title? Start by understanding the cultural values that drive the risks you’re trying to mitigate. Each stakeholder is unique, so it is crucial to capture the specific needs and nuances that each presents if they’re to become the ultimate strategic partner. Here are some ways to start:
- Employees: Your workforce is probably your biggest asset (and a large risk). Get involved and make sure you understand the issues that are coming to HR. Start by asking the department to conduct “pulse surveys,” which ask the same questions periodically and allow you to monitor trends and see the risks that are emerging in your human capital. Risk isn’t limited to litigation – it’s operational and systemic, from the risk of your best employees leaving the company and taking institutional knowledge with them, to the risk of employees not feeling bought into your company’s core strategy, or even the risk of employees feeling the company’s environment isn’t “fair” and therefore opening the likelihood for waste (or worse, fraud), to name a few.
- Clients / Customers: Another way to capture stakeholder values is by engaging your client service or sales teams. Ask whether they’re utilizing pulse and “post-mortem” surveys for clients or customers to understand how happy they are with your services/products. Not only does this close the spicket on losing customers and lowering your revenue risk, but this is where you can identify why your company may have risk of non-payment and a growing accounts receivable balance, or illuminate where your end-users may feel frustrated because they are not receiving the value they were promised.
- Policymakers: Identifying the political values that affect your business is another way the legal department can better inform strategic recommendations. Who’s in office, and who’s up for reelection? Who’s running against them? How do judges lean in the jurisdictions in which you’re most likely to litigate? By arming your department with these crucial insights, CLOs can provide solutions unique to mitigating risk in the districts that matter most to doing business.
- Partnerships: National partnerships are a great marketing tool but aren’t as effective in mitigating real risks that come from a local presence on the ground. National partnerships tend to be top-down and, once they infiltrate communities, have a watered-down impact. You can recommend strong local partnerships that go beyond a marketing exercise and establish goodwill, build pipelines for employment into your company, and help keep your “ear to the ground” so you hear of any issues before they hit the press or litigation docket.
- Peers: Finally, don’t forget to look around your business. What cases are being filed amongst your peer groups? What are the outcomes? By closely monitoring the litigation risks that plague your peers, you can identify the warning signs they missed and pivot to meet stakeholder needs.
Gaining Traction with the Business and in the C-Suite
Once you’re armed with the right data to give strategic advice, how you communicate that advice and ensure you’re brought into the conversation early enough is key to being impactful. You can start with the following:
- Build relationships: Foster organic relationships with the business teams you support – learn the strategies they have in place, their teams’ goals and how they intend to accomplish them, and their strengths and weaknesses.
- Develop a business mindset: Ensure you fully understand your company’s goals, objectives, and challenges, and understand what your competitors are doing differently and where they have run into legal issues. With 360-knowledge, you can provide more relevant and intentional advice.
- Communicate clearly: Avoid legal jargon and explain the reasoning behind your recommendations, so it’s clear that you’re supporting company objectives. When faced with a challenge, ask yourself if the answer is actually “no” or if it’s to probe and explain the risks vs rewards so the business can make a better decision.
- Provide training: Introduce legal issues and trends to business units so they can identify potential gaps in their strategies. Don’t just tell them where the “landmines” are and where not to step. Instead, clearly define other potential paths forward, further establishing yourself as a partner and not a roadblock.
By taking the necessary steps to engage different stakeholders across the value chain and provide strategic recommendations from those insights, CLOs can redefine the legal department. Decision-makers will begin to approach you from the inception of ideas, not the end of their evolution. No more checking a box.
To discover more ways you can offer strategic value as in-house counsel (including specific examples), join us for our “General Counsel to Chief Legal Officer: Advising the C-Suite and Elevating the Legal Department” webinar on June 21. Learn more and register here.
With more than 25 years of legal and environmental experience, Janna Sidley is a core member of the Infrastructure and Public Sector Practices at Ichor Strategies. She is based in Los Angeles.