Early September is a good time to review and revise your action plan for what's left of 2018.

What new topics have arisen this year that you and your team need to study and address? How's your progress on the skills you decided to strengthen this year? It's all part of that back-to-school vibe. These seven study areas, from Brexit prep to strengthening your peer network, are geared for legal leaders in global companies. But most also apply to all corporate counsel. Pick a few to learn about and address before year-end.

Align Your Strategy for Legal With the Company

A legal department strategy promotes accountability and responsibility. It provides a business-minded way to communicate your objectives and report on progress and performance. It helps you justify resource requirements. An agreed strategy for your function is especially important to lead during times of change, helping your team set and meet concrete objectives. Do you have one?

If yes, make sure that your strategy connects with your company's goals. Executive vice president and GC of Fortune 500 DXC Technology Co. Bill Deckelman said, “Legal leaders must align their organization with the strategy and operational model of the enterprise itself to ensure business support.”

You may want to update the strategic objectives for legal at the same time. Review and adapt objectives to your company's new directions which affect demands of the legal function. Make sure that your legal strategy responds to your primary stakeholders' expectations. Often there's a disconnect. Your stakeholders may expect your help managing the risks of entering new geographic markets, for example, or adopting new technology, or offering services in a new sector.

Help Sustain and Protect Corporate Reputation

As you think about your own professional focus, consider approaching advocacy in a new way. A company's ethics and positions on today's issues can affect performance, reputation and the behavior of regulators and shareholders. When the general counsel can effectively advocate on important themes for the organization's stakeholders, she can protect and strengthen corporate reputation. Look into this promising opportunity for general counsel to demonstrate value and contribute to the enterprise.

This new sort of advocacy has three consistent elements:

• The theme selected for advocacy is of great relevance to your company.
• The C-suite, and often board of directors, is involved and supports the general counsel's contribution.
• The general counsel uses nontechnical legal abilities that global companies increasingly value. They include communication skills, business acumen, influence, creativity and agility.

Get Moving on Brexit Preparation

Exit date is March 29, 2019. Waiting for clarity on Brexit is like waiting for perfect compliance with General Data Protection Regulation— it won't happen anytime soon, and you still need to prepare. It's irresponsible not to have at least a list of what you expect you'll need to know and do first.

I don't know a general counsel that has a clear understanding of how Brexit will affect their organization. But they have prioritized issues by creating scenarios around how Brexit will affect:

• Changes (including delays) in the current flows of data, goods and capital.
• Restrictions on movement or placement of employees.
• Existing trade agreements and tariffs.

Step Up Communications With Your Team

Are your people completely clear about the objectives and progress of your department? How about your stakeholders? In-house leaders facing change must recognize the requirement to communicate plainly and regularly—to your team, to internal clients, to other stakeholders. Many say that communication is an essential element of guiding change.

General counsel who have led transformation often comment that they far underestimated the time and attention necessary to make sure their messages are truly understood. Those messages should explain:

• Why are we doing this? Tell it like it is. Tie the reasons to company, team and individual goals.
• What do I need to do? Define specific expectations.
• How long do I have to learn this? Deadlines push people to act.
• What's in it for me? Individual and team benefits are a big motivator.
• How is it going? How am I doing? Celebrate wins, big and small.

Make Your Case for Legal Operations

To defend your budget and fund technology and process to improve performance for your internal clients, you must present a compelling proposal. Metrics, the language of business, are required as you set your goals and show results. Legal operations pros, skilled at mining and presenting data, can help you build your case.

While your in-house lawyers are delivering advice, a legal ops professional has the experience and bandwidth to implement operational innovation and find ways to improve efficiency annually. If there are reasons barring you from creating a dedicated legal operations position in your department, you may be able to borrow some of the equivalent skills from another corporate function. Define your needs and give it a try—it's a valuable start.

Reinforce Your Peer Network

Ironically, good information is much harder to get in our information age. Now is a good time to think about what trusted personal contacts can give you the advice and perspectives you may need in new areas or uncharted territory. Internationally, it's much harder to separate truth from rubbish when you may not know the language, laws or people. Info on legal developments and risks may be everywhere, but rarely specific enough to really help you.

Those who manage legal risk in multiple countries know that contextual info with insights is required. You need to know who you are entering into business with, how to identify and prioritize regulations, and how best to calm a brewing dispute. This sort of specific, valued insight is usually delivered one-to-one.

Devote some attention to identifying peers that cannot only answer your questions, but that can tell you what questions to ask. To get a balanced perspective, make sure that your sources include culturally diverse people with backgrounds that vary from yours.

Build Your Skill Set

Expectations of today's general counsel keep changing. Broad legal knowledge is assumed and hard to evaluate, and it's far from enough to succeed as a corporate legal executive as we move towards 2020.

Many global legal chiefs have built brilliant careers because they continuously gain the nonlegal competencies that are in demand. Midlevel in-house counsel who aspire to a legal chief role must also focus on developing these competencies.

Two areas of competency that were high on the list in our 2017 Global Counsel Leaders Circle 2017 Benchmark (a biannual peer benchmark study) had never been mentioned before. They are: leadership and tech-savvy. How can you help certain members of your team gain leadership or tech skills? How do you want to up your game in the coming year?

E. Leigh Dance advises legal and compliance leaders in global corporations on strategy, communications and demonstrating performance, as well as on adapting and adopting practices of best-in-class legal functions. She is founder and director of Global Counsel Leaders and will chair Leaders Circle roundtable conferences this fall in New York and London.