I’ll start this post by saying it is both awesome and (somewhat) dispiriting to have to follow the last “Ten Things” blog post, i.e., Talia Jarvis’ guest post on what you need to know as a woman in-house lawyer. I feel like the Rolling Stones agreeing to follow James Brown at the 1964 T.A.M.I. awards. If you don’t know what happened, let’s just say Mr. Brown blew the Stones off the stage with his act. [1] So, here I am trying to follow her fantastic post – and what have I got for you? Umm, let’s talk about meetings! Yay! Yeah, I know. Definitely feels like a B-side. Damn. I never imagined it would suck to be Mick Jagger.
One thing I have written a lot about is all of the meetings that in-house lawyers attend. Sometimes, I think I spent at least half of my in-house career in meetings. Having sat in meetings, run meetings, avoided meetings, been bored to death in meetings, tried to crawl out the door at meetings, I feel I have a pretty good perspective on the issue. In past editions of “Ten Things,” I have written about how to hold more effective staff meetings, hosting offsite meetings, 1:1 meetings, and even how to escape meeting hell (a favorite pastime of mine). Today I want to talk about rethinking the base-type of meetings in-house legal departments hold. In particular, moving away from long-drawn-out staff meetings and department meetings to something significantly shorter. There will always be a place for those longer meetings, but something I have become very partial to is the “huddle” (also called a “stand-up” or a “scrum”) meeting. There is a lot of value you can derive from a huddle meeting, for yourself, for the department, and for the company. What’s a huddle meeting you ask? Well, you’re in luck. This edition of “Ten Things” discusses what you need to know about huddles and how they can benefit you and your legal department:
Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel® 