As legal podcasters we have interviewed dozens of in-house attorneys and other experts about in-house careers. Here are the top ten insights from guests on our respective podcasts, The Legal Department and The Portia Project Podcast®, on how to succeed in-house:

1. Seek out Opportunities to "Be with the Business." Most departments in a company have staff meetings or other recurring meetings where they discuss priorities, strategies, and pain points. Ask to join these meetings.  As Michelle Johnson-Tidjani, Chief Administrative Officer for CommonSpirit Health (and three-time general counsel) put it: "I found that the best way to support [a] function was to go and sit with that function so that I understood a bit more about the business." Detroit Lions General Counsel Maggy Carlyle recommends being proactive about this: "It's proactively asking, … 'Invite me so I can listen,' and doing that first, coming and listening…."

2. Come with a "Curiosity First" Mindset. Issue spotting is fundamental for lawyers.  When we identify an issue or risk that the business can proactively address, we are at our best.  But too often we lead by identifying all of the flaws, warts or problems with someone's idea.  Practice an open, "curiosity first" mindset. Sapna Pandya, General Counsel of Red Bull North America practices active listening, "I sometimes will ask or say, 'I'm going to hold off on providing any feedback on this. I'm going to listen right now. . . it's not always the time to showcase your knowledge of every legal risk that comes up. Give people an opportunity. Give them maybe larger guardrails if they're looking for it."

3. Make it a Priority to Develop Your Team. Former in-house counsel, now executive coach Sheila Murphy described on The Portia Project® podcast how the ability to manage talent and develop your team's abilities is critical to being promoted in-house. She explained: "Depending on the year, twenty percent to forty percent of my bonus could depend on the talent I developed." Scott Westfahl, Director of Executive Education at Harvard Law School described another benefit of building a team on The Legal Department podcast: "the more you're able to develop the people underneath you, the more bandwidth you have to be operating at the highest and best use of your time." 

4. Seek Out Stretch Projects. On the Portia Project® podcast, Ann Kappler, Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer of Prudential Financial, noted that "[b]roadening your experience is very important," as is understanding the business, and developing leadership skills. Good leaders may be outside the legal department; seek them out and learn from them. Michelle Banks, former General Counsel at The Gap, agrees it is important to "be open-minded about broadening your skills." She explained how each of her positions built out her experience even before going in-house: "at my first firm, I did mostly domestic corporate work. At my second firm, I did more international corporate work then I moved beyond doing corporate to doing some commercial work. Those things all helped me be more attractive as an in-house candidate because I had corporate and commercial and domestic and international experience." 

5. Connect the Dots Across Departments. General Counsel often describe their role as being at the intersection of many different aspects of the company they serve, which gives them a more holistic view of the challenges the firm faces. Lisa Lang, General Counsel of Ohio Northern University, describes her role at times as being "almost like a funnel operationally": "I'm able to help make connections between other agencies within different departments within the university. I can connect people …. I can say 'You're dealing with this issue from this perspective but I've had a conversation with this other person . . . who is having issues with that thing but from a different perspective.'" Erin Wilson, General Counsel of CU Direct, describes situations where she has directly served as a mediator and negotiator between different departments at her company — sales teams, the technology teams, and the legal department, for example – to help them reach an acceptable solution that meets company-wide needs, not just the needs of a particular department. 

6. Translate Legalese into the Language of Business. Businesspeople don't need a detailed legal memo, they need "news they can use." Erin Wilson described her in-house role as being an "interpreter" on The Portia Project® podcast. Aarash Daroodi, EVP and General Counsel of Fender Instruments echoed this on The Legal Department: "You need to be able to deliver the help and the information in a way that can be digested by the modern worker." Kelsie Rutherford, formerly of SES Satellites, puts it another way: "When you're speaking to other lawyers, that's one conversation but it is so different when you're speaking to salespeople or businesspeople or people on your finance team or engineers. We all speak our own business language."  

7. Be the Department of "Yes, if . . ." or "Yes, and . . ." It can be hard to get comfortable with risk, but successful in-house lawyers are better off not becoming known as the department of "no." As Dana Lira, SVP of Legal and Business Affairs at Warner Brothers put it: "if you become the department of 'no' or that's your reputation, then the clients stop coming to you, and they do what they want to do anyway. That's always been what I've counseled people on. The more that we can be seen as a business partner and someone who's trying to facilitate business, the more we're going to be brought in earlier and into all the conversations and help shape things . . . ." 

8. Demonstrate the Value-Add of In-House Legal. In-house lawyers need to be mindful of showing the legal department's value. Maggy Carlyle of the Detroit Lions advises in-house lawyers to track money saved by in-house legal: "start taking notes and taking receipts, as they say, of what [you] saved [the organization]." Marcie Getelman, Deputy General Counsel of Lennar Corporation, explains that in-house lawyers can also show their value "by creating a strategy that will ultimately allow you to create a new law that helps cases down the road."  And Sheila Murphy observed: "being perceived as someone who has initiatives and strategic ideas" and "being proactive in terms of how you approach issues" can be helpful too. 

9. Know Your Audience. As Michelle Banks explains it, "One of the most important things and biggest transitions to make as a new first-time general counsel is to realize that you have at least three constituencies," including the board of directors, your business partners in the C Suite, and shareholders or regulators or some other external body. "On a daily basis, if you are accountable to [multiple] constituencies and you're overemphasizing one, it's going to be hard to be successful." 

10. Lead Through Influence. Collaborative leadership or leading through influence is essential to succeeding in-house. As Joanne Caruso, EVP and Chief Legal and Administrative Officer of Jacobs Engineering puts it, "You're leading people who may report to you, but you are also leading across an organization or a firm by influence as well." Monica Palko, Chief Legal and Administrative Officer of York Space Systems, similarly observes: "So much of the organization will not report to you…. An important part of leadership is the more subtle side, which is influencing people who do not report to you and will never report to you. That's an important part of developing as a leader in-house as well."

Stacy Bratcher, General Counsel of Cottage Health, is the creator and host of The Legal Department podcast. M.C. Sungaila, a partner at the Complex Appellate Litigation Group, is the creator and host of The Portia Project® podcast.