Two legal departments are fully immersed in the digital age, two maintain a solid presence in the world of bricks and mortar. What’s more, one of them is a nonprofit, which renders many of the concerns of the other three irelevant. Examined from another angle, two of them are resolutely, explicitly multinational; another is, too, just by its ubiquity. The last one is in flux. What could these diverse legal departments possibly share?
We asked ourselves this question as we pored through dozens of nomination forms. And we came up with an answer that’s hard to define, but easy to see when you bump into it. They rise above what a group of lawyers is expected to do. They do it with innovation, a sense of community, even a bit of swagger. They’re confident in their abilities, but they also look to improve.