Managing Legal

The Point

In turning from the current reactive, makeshift approach to Legal, to a financially sustainable and operationally coherent strategy, what options does the business have?

I suggest three kinds. Continue reading

The Point

Part I of this series concluded:

” … In most companies, corporate Legal is a business function without a strategy … without objectives and metrics by which to assess its effectiveness .”

In other words, most corporate Legal functions neglect to target specific results for which executive management can hold them accountable. And they lack measures against which to assess their results (other than generalized cost complaints).

Nevertheless, most corporate Legal functions have what amounts to a substitute for a strategy, implicitly adopted by default. As the article cited in Part I (“The One Thing You Need to Know About Managing Functions“, Roger L. Martin & Jennifer Riel, Harvard Business Review, July – August 2019) put it:

“You have a strategy whether you like it or not … The goal may be implicit … The choices may have emerged without discussion or exploration. The actions may be ineffectual in achieving the goal. But the strategy exists nonetheless.”

So the typical corporate Legal function’s implicit, default substitute for a coherent strategy that actually amounts to a set of tactics:

1. Respond to events ad hoc; don’t commit Legal to achieve particular outcomes, and
2. When a legal need arises, simply assign lawyers to whatever task needs doing.

Continue reading

The Point

In most companies, corporate Legal is a business function without a strategy.

Executive management needs to fix this. Because neither attorneys in law firms nor those in-house have defined what is — and is not — within Legal’s scope of responsibility. And, apart from generalized concern about cost, business leadership lacks agreed measures by which this function’s results can be evaluated.

Unaccountable to explicit performance metrics, Legal lacks a meaningful foundation on which to craft its strategy as a corporate function. (“The One Thing You Need to Know About Managing Functions“, Roger L. Martin & Jennifer Riel, Harvard Business Review, July – August 2019).

So Legal’s prevailing mode of operation, with minor exceptions, is reactive. With attorneys both in law firms and in-house making ad hoc responses to client events. Leaving the business enterprise without objectives and metrics by which to assess Legal’s effectiveness as a corporate function. Continue reading