Building and retaining a winning legal team is getting tougher as private practice pushes up competition for the best recruits. Delegates at this month's Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum addressed the issue. Michelle Madsen reports

"Leaders are judged by the quality of their teams," InBev general counsel Sabine Chalmers told delegates during a keynote speech at the Legal Week Corporate Counsel Forum in Brussels.

Attracting and retaining in-house talent in a year that has seen top City firms hike salaries to an all-time high is proving to be an increasing challenge for general counsel. For in-house lawyers debating how to create a winning legal formula, Chalmers' message was clear: to build a successful team, you need to create the right career opportunities.

Building and retaining a world-class legal team was the central theme of the two-day conference, which was held at The Conrad Hotel in Brussels last week.

International companies and institutions including PricewaterhouseCoopers, General Electric, BAE Systems, 3i, Lehman Brothers, Coca-Cola, HSBC, Harvey Nichols, Lloyds TSB, Tyco and Morgan Stanley were represented by senior lawyers at the conference.

Nick Deeming, general counsel at global energy company Linde and co-chair of the conference, opened proceedings by telling delegates his experiences of building a legal team. Outlining his thoughts on what skills general counsel need to be an effective leaders, Deeming talked delegates through his own experiences as a manager at FTSE 100 energy company BOC and – since 2006 – at Linde after the German company's acquisition of BOC.

"Management is about doing things proactively to make stuff happen. It should never be about the status quo or a passive exercise," he said. "Management requires energy, clarity and, above all, accountability."

Deeming also counselled delegates to try to develop all members of the team, rather than hoarding knowledge among a handful of senior staff.

Leadership and talent development

This sentiment was echoed by Chalmers, who outlined how she had moved to create career opportunities for lawyers at InBev. She recalled how she had been propelled to her current position at one of the world's largest drinks companies after receiving support from former mentors at Diageo and Guinness.

Chalmers told delegates she had felt apprehensive about taking InBev's top legal role at a relatively early point in her career: "I was not quite ready for the responsibilities when I came to InBev but the company allowed me to grow into the role. You should take people on who are not quite ready for things and then develop them."

Chalmers used that concept as a guiding principle when she created InBev's legal leadership team, which placed lawyers on the management teams of each of the drink giant's different regions. Last year InBev unveiled plans for an in-house training scheme designed to hone the skills of a select group of lawyers at the company, grooming them to take on senior leadership roles.

She said it was the general counsel's responsibility to inspire their team to develop and get to grips with their company's culture.

"The biggest insight I had for the role was the knowledge that quality of talent produces great results," she said. Great people attract more of the same, but the reverse is also true."

One delegate argued that it was difficult in many companies to translate the 'feel-good' factor across from the fee earning side to the supporting departments such as legal. Chalmers argued that really effective general counsel should translate a clear vision of their company's strategy to the legal function and then argue for greater resources for legal training from the business.

She said: "Be a passionate ambassador of the culture of your company while championing the legal function and the people in it."

At a later panel session, BAE Systems legal director Andrew Gallagher told delegates how a recent change of leadership at the company had breathed new life into the legal team.

He said that BAE's recruitment of former O2 general counsel Philip Bramwell and his consequent creation of a global legal hub and a 10-member leadership group had moved its lawyers closer to the business.

Gallagher added that the defence company would look to benchmark its legal function against that of General Electric, commenting that he wanted the legal team to be regarded as "essential to the management of the group".

Mentoring and coaching

While lawyers in private practice have constant access to their firm's training schemes, in-house lawyers often complain that they have limited opportunities to gain formal career development.

How to best provide for the mentoring and coaching needs of in-house lawyers was the topic of a panel session that featured senior lawyers from companies including JP Morgan Chase, Northrop Grumman, the Kite Consultancy and InBev.

Chrissi Evans, consultant and former general counsel at DaimlerChrysler, discussed her experiences of personal coaching and cited developing communication skills and learning how to manage difficult clients as typical coaching objectives for the in-house lawyer.

Panellists debated whether the sort of intense, one-on-one coaching described by Evans could be tackled internally to cut costs. One delegate asked whether it was not best to always outsource coaching regardless of cost given that internal coaches might not be relied upon to give impartial advice.

Northrop Grumman general counsel for Europe, Wolf von Kumberg, urged corporate counsel to approach coaching and mentoring in a different way from their colleagues on the business side.

Dividing career development into formal and informal processes, Kumberg said that while general counsel could ensure that they provided continuing formal structure of assessment, he had found that providing the same structure for mentoring was less successful.

He called on panellists to encourage their lawyers to find mentors for every stage of their careers by guiding them to suitable people from both the legal and non-legal sides of the business.

"Technical legal knowledge at this level really should be a given," he said. "Where you need to concentrate is on the soft skills side – it is lawyers' people skills that need to be developed."