in-house lawyer

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: In-House Lawyers and Imposter Syndrome

A while back, I wrote about how in-house lawyers can reduce stress in an otherwise pretty stressful job.  I picked the topic because it was an issue that had come up several times when speaking with in-house lawyers.  I am going to continue that trend and take up another topic that comes up frequently.  The topic is “imposter syndrome.”  I can imagine that a lot of you reading this instantly took note and said, “I know exactly what he means!”  Others may be thinking that I am going to discuss all those cool fake masks in the Mission: Impossible movies.  Regardless of which side of the line you fall, it is an important topic and one worth discussing because, as you will see, almost everyone deals with it at some point in their career.  I certainly did.  The important thing, in my opinion, is recognizing what’s going on when it hits and knowing how to escape its clutches.  This edition of “Ten Things” does just that, i.e., what is it and how do you move past it:

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