KPIs

Ten Things: Ten Questions the Legal Department Should Ask the Business Right Now (2026 Edition)

Hello everyone and hello 2026!  It’s time to kick off another year of “Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel.”  For a number of years, I started January with my “essential issues” for in-house lawyers post, i.e., things I thought were important for in-house lawyers to watch out for over the upcoming year.  It was something I did as general counsel; a good exercise to go through to help put the legal department at the front of the pack when it came to spotting risk and opportunity for the company. Last year, I changed things up and did my first “New Year’s resolutions” for in-house lawyers where I set out a number of things in-house lawyers could do over the course of the year to make themselves better lawyers and more valuable to the department (and the company).[1]  I enjoyed that one, but since I like to mix things up, I am going to try out something different again this year.

I want to go back to the basics of being an in-house lawyer.  For me, that means being attuned to what is going on at the company and asking lots of questions.  Questions are often the most important tool in your in-house survival kit.  The right questions at the right time can reveal problems that can get solved before they become big problems. Nipping things in the bud is an undervalued skill most in-house lawyers bring to the table.  I think it’s undervalued because many legal departments don’t know how to market why their early intervention is so valuable to the business.  You can find out more about how to solve that problem by reading my post on how to market the legal department.[2]  Besides marketing skills, in-house lawyers need to spend time thinking about what types of problems may be lurking out there that can cost a lot of blood and treasure to fix.  In other words, what questions should I be asking the business here in January 2026?  This is the difference between legal being the brake pedal (reactive) vs. the gas pedal (proactive).  You want to be the latter!  I have been thinking about this over the past several weeks and have come up with a list of questions that I think all in-house lawyers should be asking the business right now.  This edition of “Ten Things” sets those questions out for you, along with why they matter (to legal and to the business) and, more importantly, potential next steps:

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Ten Things: The Best Blogs, Podcasts, and Other Media for In-House Lawyers (2025 Edition)

Hello everyone and welcome to the end of 2025.  It’s been a jammed packed year for me and the blog.  As usual, I like to end the year with my list of the best blogs, podcasts, and “other media” for in-house lawyers.  And, no surprise, there is a lot of great content – and a lot of great content generators – out there that deserve your attention.  This is a far cry from what was available when I started the “Ten Things” blog back in 2014.  It was pretty bleak to be honest.  There were few, if any, specific resources for in-house lawyers then.  Generally, there were law firm client alerts (meh…) and the Association of Corporate Counsel (not bad, but you have to pay for it…).  This in-house counsel “wasteland” was a driving factor in my creating the blog.  And, looking back, I have been able to stay pretty true to my goals at the time: free, practical content covering issues that matter to in-house counsel written from the perspective of someone who has sat in the chair.  I continue to be source agnostic, i.e., if someone has something good out there, I will share it with you.  I am happy to promote anyone’s content that helps get my points across to you or otherwise deserves your attention.

But what was a wasteland in 2014 is now a rain forest! And seeing how in-house lawyer-focused content has exploded is pretty incredible.  I hope to occupy my small sliver of this space for a while longer but, as I have said before, my shelf life will expire at some point and I will simply hang up my cleats and enjoy all of the new voices coming online every week.  That time is not now and I know I have at least one more year of “Ten Things” in me, so stick around for a bit longer!  But enough about that, let’s get onto today’s topic.  I am going to structure this post a little differently than my typical list of ten because (as I look over my notes) it just makes more sense to do that – and if there is one thing I firmly believe it is not staying wedded to a particular way of doing things if something else might work better.  Similarly, in the past I tried to avoid picking my “best of” from blogs and writers whom I selected in the past.  But, I realize that each year is different and someone who is an excellent writer should be recognized in 2025 just as much as in 2023 or 2024.

Lastly, before we start, keep in mind that there is nothing stopping you from making your voice heard.  Starting a blog or a LinkedIn newsletter has never been easier.  Write about what you know and what you love, do it consistently and, over time,  your audience will find you.  In other words, if you have something to say, say it (just be respectful and courteous because we need way more of that in the world today).  Okay, time to get off the soapbox before it caves in and I get carted off to the hospital.  Without further ado, here is my list of the best blogs, pods, and other media for in-house lawyers for 2025:

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Ten Things: Things You Can (and Should) Delegate

I have written a lot about delegation, both in the blog and in my last two books, Showing the Value of the Legal Department and The Productive In-House Lawyer.   Specifically, I write a lot about why delegation is important and how to do it.  This past week or so it has dawned on me that I have not really spent any time talking about what to delegate other than a few asides thrown in here and there.  That is an oversight I would like to correct.  Like many of my blog posts, one of the first things I do is search to see if anyone else has already written on the topic.  I really couldn’t find anything written on what in-house lawyers should delegate.  This generally means I have a pretty wide-open field to play in, which I plan to take full advantage of![1]  I decided to do what I almost always do and that is reach back to my past and think about the things that were delegated to me as a young in-house lawyer (some), things that I asked to have delegated to me (a lot), and things that I delegated to my team once I was in a position to do so (plenty but should have been more).  All of what you read below is pretty specific to my in-house experience – though I suspect they are universal to any in-house lawyer in any legal department anywhere in the world.  So, fill up the coffee mug and get ready to go deep into the world of delegation as this edition of “Ten Things” takes on the task of setting out things in-house lawyers can (and should) delegate.

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Ten Things: How to Create a Strategic Plan for the Legal Department

Running an in-house legal department is not an easy job, regardless of whether you are a legal department of one or a legal department of 200.  To start, there is never enough money, people, or time to get everything done.  Second, priorities change frequently so prioritizing where to focus your scant resources is a challenge. Third, the business often considers (wrongly) that the legal department is simply another cost center and/or necessary evil, meaning the legal team is ignored or marginalized – treated like outsiders vs. an integral part of the business.  And fourth, the legal department often lacks strategic direction, reacting to problems vs. planning for them.  I have dealt with (including failing at) all of these issues – and more – as an in-house lawyer, especially as general counsel for multiple companies over the course of a long in-house legal career.  I wish I could tell you that solving these problems is easy, but it is not.  The biggest hurdle is that it’s hard to plan in advance when most of your day is spent frantically trying to dig out from under the incredible amount of work dumped on your desk or when cleaning up the latest catastrophe brought on by the knuckleheads in [insert business group name here].  Still, in order to be successful as an in-house lawyer and create a legal function that fits snugly within the cloak of the company’s strategic goals and plans you must make time for planning.  It’s that simple.  Sure, you can mutter curses at me under your breath or chuck imaginary (or real)[1] rocks at your screen as you read this, but I am just telling you what you need to hear – not what you want to hear.  The good news is that creating a strategic plan for the legal department is difficult but pretty straightforward and something you can accomplish if you set your mind to it (and let others help).  So, hold the rocks and creative profanity for a few minutes as this edition of “Ten Things” discusses how you go about creating a strategic plan for the legal department:

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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:

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Ten Things: Ten KPIs All In-House Legal Departments Should Track

I have been struggling to write this post about KPIs.  It’s taken way longer than it should have – with several starts and stops.  First, should it be KPI or KPIs?  Just like the debate over RBI and RBIs in baseball, passions run hot on this point.  I think “KPIs” sounds better, so I’m going with that.  Second – and slightly more important than the KPI/KPIs controversy – KPIs don’t work particularly well for in-house legal departments.  Actually, I had this eureka moment a long time ago when I was first asked as General Counsel to provide “SMART”[1] objectives for the legal department for an upcoming calendar year.  I literally had no clue what they (HR) were talking about.  And when I asked them for some examples, it was clear they had no clue either – at least when it came to developing SMART objectives for the legal department.  For other parts of the business, SMART objectives seemed obvious and worked great.  For legal, not so much. But, I (and my team) eventually figured it out and designed goals that were a little squishy – “SMART-ish” – but to which no one objected.  You can see some examples of this in an older post titled “Setting Goals for the Legal Department.”

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