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Working as In-House Counsel: The worst, the best and the rest

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The Worst

By far the most annoying thing about being an in-house attorney is the fact that even though the company hired you for your subject matter expertise and risk-averse nature, they likely won’t follow your advice in the first place. As the saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it prioritize compliance over product development.” 

It can get a bit frustrating watching the Board, the C-suite or various internal teams jump from idea to idea, concept to concept, domestic to international; but one of the General Counsel’s I worked under had a great piece of advice: “It’s not our job to convince them, we just present the legal ramifications and let them decide for themselves.” 

On one hand, it feels freeing to know that you are not responsible for making these top-level business decisions; on the other, you have to sit and watch as they make the wrong. freaking. choice. Quite a dilemma—or so I thought.

The Best

As it turns out, one of the greatest things about being an in-house attorney is your ability to build coalitions and work cross-functionally with other departments. For example, when presenting research on developing privacy and security issues the company needed to be aware of, I didn’t do it alone: I worked closely with our IT and data teams to paint a realistic picture of what compliance with these new regulations would look like, as well as what resources would be needed to complete the work.

As they say, there is strength in numbers: it’s much harder to reject a project proposal with buy-in from multiple departments than a project championed by one small voice. 

The Rest

Here are three more things to keep in mind when working in-house:

1. You are not an island. Unlike a law firm focused entirely on various clients, in-house teams serve only one: their employer. This means that the legal department is just one of many other company contributors and (to be honest) sometimes the legal department just isn’t the most important. And that’s ok. In-house attorneys are expected to be collaborative and support other departments wherever possible—building compliant products and services while meeting business objectives. 

2. Don’t pull rank. Just because we may have gone to school a bit longer than some of our colleagues doesn’t make us “more important.” Pulling rank on people is cheap and unnecessary; it interrupts normal business practices and makes people hesitant to reach out to legal in the first place. One of the most effective ways to combat this sort of thinking is to bring your whole self to work: you’re not just an attorney, you’re a well-rounded person with hobbies and interests; find something enjoyable to talk about with your colleagues. The battle against boring legal departments begins with you. 

3. Be proactive, rather than reactive. Once an issue reaches litigation, there is little than can be done to stop the financial and reputational damage it will cause. One of the greatest ways in-house counsel can protect their company’s bottom line is by approaching legal and compliance issues proactively, rather than after something has already become an issue. Some of the easiest ways to do this include: staying updated on legal/regulatory developments, drafting clear and concise internal policies and collaborating with other departments as they build new products and services. This ground-up approach to legal issues and compliance can prevent a variety of problems down the road and can help foster a proactive (rather than reactive) company culture. 

In-house counsel teams may not have fancy offices, junior associates or even our own secretaries; but if we’re lucky, we are surrounded by great colleagues and doing exceptional work—sounds like a good deal to me.

Alexandra Sumner

Alexandra Sumner

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