We talk a lot in Lean Adviser about the importance of specializing in your clients. Within this, we discuss the need to understand the challenges faced by your client's General Counsel, and how it's your job to help them solve their problems.

So let's focus on the role of the GC. The better you understand the position of the GC, the better support you'll be, and the more business you'll get as a direct result.

Buckle up then for two alarming truths about GCs:

1. The General Counsel is among the most marginalized and under-appreciated people in the professional workplace.
2. The General Counsel cannot succeed in the sense you understand it, the best they can do is not fail.

Understanding these two truths is to understand how you can provide value to the GC, which they will appreciate and count you as a trusted, valued source and lead to a continued relationship.

As we all know, success in private practice is clearly defined and easily measured. There are plenty of familiar targets and metrics: recorded time, bills delivered, realization rates, originations, pro bono hours, and the rest. Tick the boxes and get the big bucks. It's pretty much linear.

The life of the GC is nothing like this. They can't win shiny new clients, or send out eye-watering bills. Their life is to get thrown into projects and under buses. They get told to do more with less, and face budget cuts to make this real.

The majority of General Counsel are highly talented lawyers who are totally committed to the cause. They work unimaginably long hours, trying to support the business, advance its goals and solve the endless problems.

So how can a GC actually succeed? In theory, by helping the company drive value, being a strategic business asset and mitigating risk. But there are no reliable metrics with which to measure these things. Many GCs who do all that — despite having no formal training in these areas — get scant recognition.

The company wants to do something unethical, illegal or both. The GC is often the only roadblock. Speak up and you're unfairly perceived by colleagues as obstructing progress and profit. Say nothing and any negative impact (regulatory roadblocks or fines, delays in product rollout, or even worse, litigation) is on you.

What are you, as outside counsel, to do with this information? As ever, the answer is to be found in the problem:

1. If the GC is under-appreciated by the business, you can at least have some empathy. Understand the predicament, show some support.
2. If the best the GC can hope for is not failing, then at least understand why they may be hesitant to stand out, take a risk or back a risky idea. Instead, help the GC not fail. Detect danger, mitigate risk and solve problems.

Having an outside counsel that they can trust takes one massive task off of the GC's plate. Considering all of the other tasks the GC needs to handle, the difference between vetting several lawyers and firms for a project and being able to solve that problem with one phone call (to you, of course) is immense.