Lawyers, including in-house lawyers, have a well-deserved reputation for over-complicating things.  Don’t worry, this isn’t a sermon.  I am standing in the dock next to you, guilty as hell!  Still, I have spent time over the course of a long career in the law trying to figure out why this is.  Why is it that lawyers make things so hard on themselves and their clients?  I think it comes down to this: lawyers hate to be wrong. No, they fear being wrong, coupled with a belief that if you throw enough time, money, and words at a legal problem you can get to the answer or solve the problem.  This explains why lawyers write in a way that no mere mortal understands.  We have developed an uber-complex grammar structure that mystifies all but those foolhardy enough to plunge into the ocean of words, clauses, commas, “notwithstandings,” triple negatives, subparts, subparts to the subparts, and so on that make up modern-day contracts.  Or why our litigation process (in the US) is now largely an exercise in trying to get documents from the other side and prevent the other side from getting your documents and working overtime to get the court to sanction the other side for not giving you documents or for trying to unfairly get your documents, or… well, you get the point.

If you spend any time thinking about it, you begin to see why business leaders appreciate practical lawyers – lawyers who can get things done quickly and who can communicate in ways the business can understand.  The issue for in-house lawyers is that both demands tend to cut against all of our training and instincts, i.e., it’s hard!  Building “Rube Goldberg” machines is in our DNA.  Fortunately, it is possible to learn to be practical.  And, while not a hard and fast rule, my experience is that in-house lawyers who are practical in their approach and advice tend to thrive at companies and become sought-after partners to the business.  Those who are not, tend to be treated like lepers – feared and shunned.[1]  This edition of “Ten Things” brings the cure and discusses how to be a practical in-house lawyer:

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