“Lawyers can’t manage.” Unfortunately, many attorneys hear this statement from peers and, more unpleasantly, from their direct reports. Nevertheless, when in-house attorneys are asked to manage a legal department, they must strive to disprove this bromide.
Firm practice and law school do not teach many of the skills in-house legal managers need to succeed. At firms, new lawyers start their careers in an environment unfamiliar to businesspeople — a world where people avoid risk, billable hours dictate value, people rarely work in multidisciplinary teams and nobody makes a decision without reviewing stacks of memoranda. Lawyers also typically are not schooled in core business skills, such as accounting, finance or operations management. Further, while the ability to opine thoroughly on opposing views may have lead a lawyer to the top of his or her civil procedure class, a business manager looking to finalize a deal point before his supply contract expires will not appreciate an “on the one hand, on the other hand” discussion. Because of these inherent challenges, an in-house lawyer promoted to lead a legal department must take certain steps to become a better manager and leader.
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