Hello again everyone. I have been working on my annual “cool tech” post, but it’s not ready for prime time as I am still sifting through things. The amount of tech out there (cool or otherwise) is amazing. And since I want to give you my best recommendations, I am going to work on it for another week or so. Instead (and because I am a big believer in keeping to a regular publishing schedule), I thought I would put out a current index to all of the “Ten Things” posts from post number one in November 2014 to last month’s post about things to think about before hitting send. There are a lot of posts and this edition of Ten Things lists them all (which is kind of the point of an index but I digress):
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Ten Things: Ten Questions To Ask Yourself Before Hitting Send (Lessons From the Trenches)
I was cleaning out some old files in a filing cabinet (yes, that’s still a thing) and I came across some plastic cards we had made up when I was head of litigation at a large technology company many moons ago. My team and I created the cards to help the business focus on key compliance issues, i.e., providing them cards with lists of easy-to-remember rules that could help keep them – and the company – out of trouble. They were about the size of a business card (that may not be a thing anymore…)[1] and were laminated so they would last forever.[2] And here in front of me were several different cards we had prepared close to twenty years ago. They included tips on competition law compliance, how to report a violation of the company handbook, and (my personal favorite) how to write smart emails that won’t end up as Exhibit A at trial. I remembered why we created these in the first place, especially the email card: If you have ever lived through big litigation (or any litigation for that matter), you understand just how deadly a poorly drafted email can be.
And deadly is right. I lived through several painful and protracted litigated disputes, and I can attest that emails (ours and theirs) were front and center, blowing up in faces like Wile E. Coyote-endorsed ACME product. The only thing missing was a sign for free birdseed. There were lots of lessons learned by unfortunate executives (and yours truly). Back then, I decided to take those lessons and create something useful to showcase basic rules to help the business – and the lawyers – write smarter emails (and other documents). As I read through the card, I realized that I had forgotten some of the lessons. And, yes, that failure has bitten me in the ass more than a few times. So, I decided it would be a good idea to write them out here for you – and for me. This edition of “Ten Things” sets out questions you should ask yourself about the email before you hit send:
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Ten Things: What to Do When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed at Work
I have been practicing law for a long time. And even now, 30+ years into the game, there are still times when I find myself overwhelmed by everything on my plate. And it’s just as shitty a feeling now as it was as a young associate at a big law firm or as general counsel dealing with – literally – bet-the-company litigation. Fortunately, getting older comes with some advantages (besides the prospect of getting 50% off if I go to IHOP at 4:00 pm for dinner). The biggest (non-IHOP) advantage being that I have developed a lot of different ways to cope with feeling this way. And that’s good because one thing I hear a lot from the in-house lawyers I speak with is that they are having an increasingly hard time dealing with the incredible amount of work that keeps rolling down the hill – like a boulder crushing Wile E. Coyote when his ACME products backfire for the nine thousandth time. Okay, that sounded better in my head, but I know you get the picture because you’ve all been there (and some of you may even be there as you are reading this).
Given the increasing number of in-house lawyers edging ever closer to burnout, I thought I would spend some time talking through what you can do when feeling overwhelmed at the office. I am going to focus on some practical, short-term solutions to help you get out of the muck and onto solid ground in the near term – as that is typically the most pressing need.[1] What I am going to set out is all tested and true, and some combination of these ten things will very likely help you.[2] How much they will help depends on how far you are willing to go to gain some control over the situation (and I know that is not always easy to do). But hear me out and stick with me. Today’s edition of “Ten Things” takes you through what you should do when you feel overwhelmed at the office:
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Ten Things: Travel Tips for the Busy In-House Lawyer
Hello everyone and greetings from 35,000 feet! I am on the road again – my third trip in April. I think I have spent more days sleeping in hotel rooms than I have at home this month. I am not complaining at all, but I do spend a lot of time on the road. And that got me thinking about all the things that have gone wrong over many years of hard travel. It’s a lot. But, like many of my blog topics, I screwed up and then learned the lesson. The same is true with traveling. I know not all in-house lawyers travel a lot, but they do travel. And it is always better to be over-prepared than to get smacked upside the head by the cold, hard, fickle hand of Fate (she is indeed a tough mistress who enjoys smacking people upside the head). I was going to write about mentoring programs, but (as I sit here on the plane) I decided this was a more interesting topic – at least to me.[1] So, instead of mentoring tips, I am going to pass along some tips I learned (the hard way) over many years so you can travel better. I am writing this with the assumption you will carry on your luggage vs. checking a bag. First tip: Never check a bag unless you have no choice.[2] See how easy that was? But brace yourself, as there is more. A lot more. This edition of “Ten Things” sets out my top travel tips for the busy in-house lawyer:
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Ten Things: Essential Issues for In-House Counsel (2025 Edition)
Hello again everyone! As I have done for the past several years, I want to share a list of issues I believe in-house lawyers should pay attention to over the coming 12 months. I started doing this when I first became a general counsel way back when Julius Caesar took 23 stabs to the body (he should have read my blog about the Ides of March). Even though I am no longer practicing in-house, the process of trying to spot key issues is something I do every year, including in my role as CEO here at Hilgers Graben. Simply put, then as now, I like to spend time thinking about developments, trends, and issues that may have a material impact on legal departments/businesses over the course of the new year. I realize this is not something they teach you in law school (or anywhere really), so I will start by setting out the steps I followed to create my list as general counsel (and you are welcome to laugh at it, use it “as is,” or modify it to suit your own purposes):
- I started by just gathering information. I would catch up with other in-house lawyers and outside counsel, read newspapers, blogs, industry reports, attend conferences, sit in on business meetings, ask business leaders at the company, ask my team what they were seeing, and just generally pay attention to what was going on around me. Information is gold and, like Scrooge McDuck, I was (and am) pretty greedy about it.
- Once I spotted an issue that intrigued me, I looked at it from multiple angles and asked this question: How might this affect the company and the legal department? Answering this meant I had to understand the company’s goals and strategy so I could spot and manage risks and I had to think strategically (not just legally).
- From there, I made a list of the most important issues I spotted and worked them into the goals and activities of the legal department for the upcoming year. To assist me, I created multiple checklists to help quickly analyze the potential risks and strategic implications of the items on my list. Here is a shortened version of one checklist. It’s a helpful filter when you look at things coming across your desk day in and day out:
- Is this something that can create or destroy value for the company?
- How does this fit into my company’s strategic goals?
- What is the quantitative/qualitative impact of this?
- Could this be a game-changer and how so?
- Is this something a regulator might care about or lead to litigation?
- Who is impacted by this – company, competitors, vendors, customers – and how so?
- What happens if I apply game theory to this?
- Who needs to know about this in the department/company?
- How can we create a competitive advantage from this?
- Have others had problems or success with this before and what are the lessons already learned?
The answers to these questions tell you a lot about the issue you are analyzing and whether it “matters” or not. You do not need a checklist, but it’s a useful tool that can help you quickly sort through a lot of information. You can also use an Eisenhower Matrix (2×2) to plot issues. Here is one option for such a matrix (though what you put on the X-axis and Y-axis is wide open):
It’s a little clunky for sure, but it just depends on what you find most useful. Regardless of what you use to help you think through the issues, it’s really all about finding a consistent framework and repeatable process. Okay, enough of the background story – let’s get going! This edition of “Ten Things” sets out my list of critical issues in-house lawyers should pay attention to and plan against for 2025:
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Ten Things: I Am On Two Podcasts This Month – How The Hell Did That Happen?!
It has been a fun month or so for me because I had the true pleasure of appearing on two of the best podcasts for in-house lawyers. The first is “The Legal Department” hosted by Stacy Bratcher, CLO at Cottage Health. The second is the “Legal Leaders” podcast hosted by David Lancelot, CLO at LawVu. Stacy and I chatted in depth about productivity for in-house lawyers, including slaying the email monster and escaping meeting hell (as well as my go-to pump-me-up song). David and I spoke about a variety of topics about practicing in-house, including technology and the keys to being an effective in-house lawyer (and if you listen closely you can hear my dog snoring blissfully in the background). Both hosts asked outstanding questions and made it very easy for me to engage with them (and covering up my blathering). So, grab some coffee and Oreos and give them a listen. I think you will find a lot to like in both podcasts – mostly from the hosts.
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Ten Things: Solving Problems (It’s Different In-House)
One of the reasons I wanted to become a lawyer was to solve problems. The added bonus was the expectation that someone would pay me (a lot) to read and write stuff to help solve those problems. How cool is that?[1] Law school and then working at a law firm for a number of years post-graduation were both fantastic training for how to solve problems. Well, how to solve legal problems. When I finally got my chance to go in-house, I learned pretty quickly that all my “legal-problem-solving-skills” were useful but many of the problems I was called upon to help with involved only a small amount of legal-ness and a lot of “other stuff” – I’ll just call that other stuff “business issues” to save time (but if you work in-house, you know exactly what I am talking about). Unfortunately, this meant that a lot of what I thought I brought to the table was useful only part of the time, i.e., solving problems as an in-house lawyer is very different from solving them as an outside lawyer. Skip forward a few centuries, and I can proudly say that I have been a lawyer for a long time with most of that time spent in-house – I survived the crucible of fire and walked away with my sanity (and all of my toes). Some don’t.[2] Why? Because, even now, one thing I consistently see from many in-house lawyers is an inability to grasp the very real difference between what the company needs from them when it comes to solving problems vs. what it needs from outside lawyers. Many lawyers (in-house or law firm) tend to fall back on the mind-numbingly rigid dogma[3] of treating every problem like a law school exam. More troubling, even when they know it’s not a legal problem they are trying to solve, they simply don’t know the way forward and fall back into the same pit of despair and anguish. Fortunately, I screwed this up enough times over the decades (and am still coated heavily in despair and anguish) that I can share a little knowledge with you here today. That’s right. This edition of “Ten Things” discusses something I bet no one has raised with you before — how to solve problems as an in-house lawyer:
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Ten Things: How to Manage People… and Lawyers
There are several things that I rarely, if ever, expect to hear in-house lawyers utter. These include, “Hey, I’m really excited about that new ‘Rocky’ movie!” and “Is $1,500 an hour enough for that Big Law third-year associate?” or, my favorite, “This suit from Sears fits perfectly!” Right up there on the Mount Rushmore of “No One Said Ever” is this, “I really love managing people – it’s the best part of my day!” Okay, that may be stretching things a bit, but, in all seriousness, managing people in an in-house legal department (like anywhere) can be a… umm, taxing job (yeah, that’s the right word, taxing). For sure, there are days when managing people – even lawyers – can be very rewarding and enjoyable. The challenging part is figuring out how to make days like that the majority versus the minority. This is difficult because – like many things I discovered post-law school – no one teaches or prepares in-house lawyers for managing people. There seems to be an assumption that if you are a good lawyer, you are automatically a good manager. As you probably know by experience, that is not true. Many great lawyers suck at managing people. It is just not the way their brains are wired. And when you put bad people managers in charge of people, it can be a disaster. I have had the benefit of having many terrific managers, both in-house and in private practice. And I have had a few duds. I learned important lessons from both types in terms of how to manage people, i.e., things to do and things not to do. Regardless, if you want to get ahead in the in-house world, especially if you aspire to sit in the general counsel chair, then it’s something you will need to learn to do and do well. This edition of “Ten Things” shares my experience with what works best when it comes to managing people in an in-house legal department:
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Ten Things: How In-House Lawyers Can Survive and Thrive in Times of Uncertainty and Change
I do a lot of speaking with and presenting to in-house lawyers and legal departments. It’s something I really enjoy doing because I get to share my “wisdom” with everyone (which is just a fancy word for “oldness”). By this I mean I have been around a while and have spent most of my working years as an in-house lawyer. And, like anyone who has completed the solar elliptical as many times as I have, I’ve dealt with a lot of different things as an in-house lawyer – some good, some bad, and some still defying categorization years later. On the bad side of the continuum, I was there for the first internet tech bubble (and the second), along with the mortgage meltdown crisis. I was in the travel business right after 9-11. I have been through natural disasters, multiple layoffs, budget cuts, reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, sales, going private, going public, and all the rest of it. I oversaw bet the company litigation, where literally the livelihoods of 10,000+ employees depended on my team not losing a piece of litigation. And most terrifying, I had a front-row seat for the incredibly shitty ending to Game of Thrones. That is a season of television I can never get back. Damn you, HBO. Damn you to hell! Sorry, I got off on a rant there. Allow me to (cough) refocus.
So, here we are again. Things feel shaky with the economy and there is a good bit of unease out there in the business world and, therefore, in the in-house legal departments that serve those businesses. I wrote about some of it last month in my post on things to watch out for in 2023. But even more so, over the past few months, I have been consistently asked to talk about/present on how in-house lawyers can succeed in an environment of change and uncertainty. So much so that a couple of nights ago (as I was NOT watching HBO), I started putting some real thought into the question and realized that I have a lot to say about it (shock!). So, this edition of “Ten Things” will discuss some of the things in-house lawyers (and legal departments) can do to survive and thrive in times of change and uncertainty:[1]
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Ten Things: Business Skills All In-House Lawyers Should Master
In my book, Showing the Value of the Legal Department, I include a section on the evolution of the role of in-house counsel. I walk through the “dark ages” (lawyers in the basement alone and ignored) all the way to the current phase of “leaders/strategic thinkers” (using our lawyer superpowers to become valued partners to the business). As I see it, the part of the role that has changed the most over the course of this evolution is the need for in-house lawyers to bring more to the table than just good legal skills. Those are just your ticket to get into the circus. To be successful, to be viewed as a partner to the business, and to get your seat at the big kids’ table with the filet mignon, you must also possess a set of key business skills. How do I know this? Well, I fumbled and bumbled my way through the process the hard way, i.e., I had to figure it out mostly on my own (but certainly – and thankfully – with the help of some key mentors along the way). But I did figure it out and had a seat at the table as general counsel three times where I learned that the business had its own language (numbers) and way of doing things (business school) that were foreign to me given my legal background. After thinking about it a bit, I realized that almost everyone at the table had a background in certain business skills that I did not possess. Moreover, while everyone was more than happy to explain things if you asked; if you didn’t ask, they just assumed you were playing the same game they were playing, and it was on you to keep up with the class. And, of course, like most lawyers, I was too proud to just up and announce that I had no clue about half the shit they were talking about. Fortunately, I was smart enough to know I had to level up or I was soon destined for the little kids’ table and a nice Happy Meal of chicken nuggets. So, level up I did. And over the course of eight years of writing this blog, I have mentioned a wide assortment of business skills you need to succeed in the role. But what I have not done is list all those skills in one post. This edition of “Ten Things” corrects that oversight and sets out the ten essential business skills you must master to succeed as an in-house counsel. And thanks to Marco Bijl, Head of Legal at Philips, for the idea:
Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel® 