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.
delegation
Ten Things: How to Delegate – The Essentials
It’s 5:30 a.m. and no one is up. You figure if you get up early you can get ahead of the emails and do some productive work. It’s lunch time. You figure if you eat at your desk you can get ahead of the emails and do some productive work. It’s 6:30 p.m. and you just got home from the office. You figure if you fire up your laptop for an hour you can get ahead of the emails and do some productive work. It’s 10:30 p.m., the kids are asleep, your spouse is watching “Game of Thrones” and you figure it’s the perfect time to get ahead of the emails and do some productive work before you go to sleep. It’s the weekend, you… Okay, I’ll stop. I know you get it. Just about any in-house lawyer worth their salt has been/is locked in this cycle. The problem is you never get ahead of the emails and you never have enough time to do productive work. If you could delegate some of your work, you might be able to break free of this vicious pattern. That sounds nice, but a big part of the problem is that most lawyers suck at delegating. Why is that? It’s primarily because no one ever taught us how to delegate. They just told us to delegate, which is about as helpful as telling us to “invent rocket fuel.”
I was an “okay” delegator as an in-house lawyer. I got better over time because I slowly figured out the “how” of delegation. Even now, as I look back, I realize I committed most of the classic errors and there was a lot more I could have done to better delegate work (and doing so would have made my team/department stronger and me less stressed). Simply put, becoming good at delegation will allow you to be more productive and get your work done within a reasonable set of hours every day. Since I know you also want to watch “Game of Thrones” now and then, this edition of “Ten Things” will discuss “how” to delegate:
Ten Things You Need to Know as In-House Counsel® 