Legal Management

"I'll Call You When I Need You"

Some business managers believe they don't need their in-house legal counsel to attend business meetings and be involved in decision-making. They think they know when to call the lawyers in. "I'll call you when I'll need you, they say." The right answer comes from Wim Bossens, a seasoned in-house counsel (and good friend of mine): "Precisely, you need me to tell you when you need me." That is a very good point. Business managers, however talented and knowledgeable they may be, may not always be aware of the legal issues involved in their decisions and actions. There are legal risks they ignore. They may be incentivized to overlook legal obstacles in their rush to "get results" and "get things done". That's why you need the lawyer in the board room and at the management committee table.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Why Do Partnerships Exist?

Why do lawyers exercise their profession in partnerships? Why do they decide at some point to create or join a partnership? This is an important question because sometimes, problems in partnerships are linked to the absence or to a misunderstanding of a rationale for being in a partnership. Here are several possible reasons why lawyers form partnerships, and as you may guess, some are questionable... There may be legitimate needs and aspirations beyond, but a partnership may not be the best way to respond to them. Here is the list:

- Sharing costs

- Not being alone. Enjoying the company of others

- Complementary practices

- Mutualisation of risks / solidarity

- Emulation

- To look like a large firm, and let clients feel secure

- Because it's more prestigious

- To attract and serve clients with a diversity of legal needs

- Because it's the way things are done.

- Etc.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

 

 

 

Cost-Sharing Partnerships: an Illusion?

Isn't it always fun to ask partners in a law firm why they belong to a partnership? Why not alone? Why this partnership?

A common answer is cost sharing.

As long as you share the costs of a copy machine, of a subscription to legal periodicals, and the salary of a receptionist, or similar items, no problem. You are indeed sharing costs.

But what about the website? What about the name of the firm? Most cost-sharing partnerships do indeed share a name and a website. This is about identity, not just costs. So, partners who think they are sharing costs (they share the cost of the web designer) end up sharing an identity (a name, an image, etc.). 

The problem is that managing costs requires some basic administrative skills and managerial common sense, but the effective management of identity requires far more than that. It requires a vision, a strategy, a focus, a culture, enforced quality standards, and other sweet things lie that.

Many cost-sharing partnerships are therefore only managing the cost dimension of their identity. There is no real strategy behind the identity, beyond finding a common denominator between partners with each their own focus and practice (and the result is a vague, cliché and fuzzy identity).

Who can blame them? They signed up for a cost-sharing arrangement, and identity comes in from the back door! It was not part of the deal, and none is ready to take responsibility for that.

So, as soon as the shared costs include the domain of visibility and identity, the idea of a partnership limited to sharing costs is indeed an illusion, whether you want it or not. And partnerships that ignore and neglect to get their vision and strategy in place get a floppy identity and blurred image. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Reporting on Legal Risks: Global vs. Reactive Approach

When in-house lawyers say they do reporting on legal risks (or at least when they say they want to set up a procedure for it), they actually mean two different things. 

For some, it means reporting on legal risks that relate to specific projects or matters. The reporting, in that case, will look like a list a pending issues whith a certain level of legal risk: a litigation case, a difficult negotiation, a transaction, a claim from a supplier, a new European regulation that might impact the business, etc. This is all right, but it remains very much reactive.

Another approach is to define a global model of legal risk identification and assessment, and to apply it proactively to assess legal risk. It is not based on an ad hoc assessment of projects or matters, but on an understanding of the business model and a definition of the main legal risks pertaining to it. It is not ad hoc description, but a systematic, global and proactive risk mapping that allows to anticipate problems, instead of reacting when they materialise. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

 

What Does "Quality" Mean?

Most lawyers claim to pursue high standards of "quality", and see quality as the cornerstone of their strategy. They are right. Achieving quality is the best way to make clients happy, to spread a positive word of mouth and to grow the practice. But what does quality actually mean? I see five dimensions in quality: expertise, relationship, effectiveness, service and style.

Expertise. Quality implies, of course, that the lawyer is a reliable legal expert. She knows the law and how to deal with legal issues. This quality is what lawyers learn and develop at law school (although that's just the beginning). A law firm that claims to have a superior level of quality, or "excellence", because many of its members are law professors and frequently publish articles in legal periodicals, implicitly define quality as legal expertise.

Relationship. But there is more than legal expertise in quality. There is also quality in the relationship between the attorney and the client. The ability to inspire trust, to show empathy and respect, to connect with the client and make the client feel at ease and secure, to listen carefully, to communicate in a clear, concise and simple way, to understand the client's problem and objective, to create a collaborative, mutually beneficial relationship, to manage expectations, to solve possible conflicts or misunderstandings... this are all areas that nothing to do with legal expertise, but that have nevertheless a powerful impact on whether an attorney and a law firm will be perceived as high or law quality. Note that this dimension of quality is not taught at all in law schools.

Effectiveness. Besides expertise and relationships, another pillar of quality is the ability to get results. After all, clients do not go to lawyers for the sake of listening to sophisticate legal reasoning, or for the sake of a warm and feel-good relationship, but because they have problems or objectives and need them solved or achieved. That means, for example, winning the case, closing the deal, improving the client's situation in a negotiation, finding a way forward in a complex situation, obtaining a permit, or providing an advice that is clear, practical and actionable. Wouldn't quality be an empty and vain concept if it didn't include effectiveness?

Service. Finally, service also contributes to quality. This is mostly about speed, availability, reactivity and accessibility. The importance of that dimension could not be overestimated. It is not a nice addition to quality; it is an essential component of it. When asked about their definition of "quality", many clients put speed at the top of the list.

Style. When there are typos in a legal memo, it does not make the advice less effective, but it does not "look" professional. It is not about substance, but about form. It is about avoiding typos, getting impeccable layout; it is about using a quality paper for correspondence; about the quality of the coffee in the meeting room and of the sofa on the waiting room;  about the elegance of voice of the receptionist and about having your shoes polished. It's about looking like a Lexus more than like a Toyota. Some lawyers are extremely sensitive to that aspect of quality. Sometimes, it becomes an obsession, and a matter of identity. Some clients care, some don't: they know what a lavish paper does not make the advice on it better. The contribution of style to quality can be discussed: does a great style actually add value to the client, or is it just a look-good, feel-good device for the lawyers themselves?

Note that combining these five dimensions may sometimes be tricky: service requires to react quickly, but expertise and a zero-typo policy requires to double check everything in order to make sure that the advice is complete and 100% reliable, which takes time (and costs money).

Law firms that focuses on only one dimension of quality (most of the time, legal expertise) might be convinced they are top quality (because, for example, most of their partners are law professors), but their clients might have a very different opinion if these partners, despite their superior legal mind, misbehave in relationships (for example by being arrogant, showing no interest in their client's business, etc.), fail to provide practical, actionable advice, or do not return phone calls or respect deadlines.

Moreover, to many clients, legal expertise is a black box. They don't know, and don't want to know anything about it, just as the buyer of a car may not be interested in the functioning of the engine of his new car. If they have no legal background, they may even be even to understand the legal discussions at stake. In other words, many clients are not in a position to perceive and assess the degree of legal expertise of their attorney. What they can always perceive, on the contrary, is the quality of the relationship and of the service, the effectiveness and the style. Improving these areas may therefore have a stronger impact on the perception of quality by the clients that improving legal expertise.

It does not mean that legal expertise is not important. It is of course a must. It is something that clients expect their lawyers to have, by definition. It's a pre-condition for being in business. But what will shape the client's perception of quality, to a large extent, is unrelated to legal expertise. Lawyers who ignore that do it at their own peril.

We could even go further than this five-leg definition of quality, and go for a post-modern definition of the concept. Quality is whatever the client thinks it is. In my own practice, I often ask to my clients their definition of quality in relation to the assignment they give to me. How will they judge whether my work is top quality? I try to use their answer as my guiding philosophy for working with them. When I suggest to lawyers to ask the same question to their clients, they often look at me as if I just said something really weird, or as if asking that question was a sign of low self-confidence. But I am convinced that to get things right in the area of quality, it is essential to look at it with a fresh eye from the client's perspective. I find the answers from my clients extremely helpful, and none of my clients ever looked negatively surprised by my asking the question, quite the contrary.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

What Is the Value of an Audit?

Many organisations go through audits: for example, a client satisfaction audit, the organisational audit of the law department of a company, a partnership audit where each partner is invited to share his or her perceptions about all the dimensions of the partnership from governance to finance to team spirit, an audit of associates' satisfaction, etc.

These audits always have a certain cost, and that has of course on impact on the decision to launch an audit or not, and to hire one or another provider to do it. But assessing cost only is not sufficient. It's the value/cost ratio that matters, not just the cost. But then, how to assess the value of an audit? And what can you do, as the buyer or the provider of an audit, to improve the value/cost ratio by increasing the value?

Three parameters can have value for the client: the audit process itself, the conclusions, and the changes that follow the audit. 

The process. Some audits can, just by taking place, have a positive impact on the organisation. For example, partners and associates invited to speak up in an organisational audit may feel relieved to have at least an opportunity to explore and express their concerns and ideas. The audit process, irrespective of its results, can energise an organisation, boost team dynamics, relieve tensions, create a new climate of trust and openness, enhance internal communication, strengthen relationships, inspire people to think in a more thorough, structured and creative way about the organisation and their job, etc. 

This does not happen by magic, of course. It requires the audit to be conducted in a certain way. Sometimes, an audit can be perceived as inquisitorial, useless, boring, irrelevant, disruptive, rigid or stupid. In that case, the process as such is not creating any value. On the contrary; it undermines the motivation of the personnel, damages the reputation and credibility of the audit's sponsors, feeds cynicism and distrust, or simply irritates people and makes them waste their time.

So, the first thing to do to increase the value of an audit is to ensure it will be perceived as a positive experience. The process itself, irrespective of the conclusions or follow up, must have a positive, energising impact on the people and on the organisation, instead of a destructive one.

The conclusions. Depending on the content and on the way they are formulated, conclusions can have a high or a low value. High-value conclusions are reliable and simple, clear and concise. They are complete but highlight priorities. They combine in a transparent way data reporting and intelligent analysis and interpretation. And most importantly, they are delivered to and discussed with the right people, in a way that positively engage these people. 

On the contrary, conclusions that are too long, too detailed, or too complex to make sense, reports that focus on ancillary points and fail to highlight the big ones, reports that are either too soft or too hard, or reports that are never heard or never read; all of this reduces or annihilates the value of an audit.

So, improving the quality of the conclusions, of the report that contains them, and of the delivery and presentation of these conclusions is another way to improve the value of an audit.

The changes. Finally, and to a very large extent, the value of an audit depends on the action that will flow from it. Sometimes, the audit can be a perfect process, the conclusions may be clear, important and well communicated, but for some reasons, no decisions are made and nothing is done. Nothing changes. In that case, the overall value of the audit, despite the quality of the process and of the conclusions, can be negative. People will feel, afterwards, that it was a useless exercise and a waste of their time, if not a manoeuvre to manipulate them. The whole thing can blow back and actually destroy value and increase negativity.

So, the third way to improve the value of an audit is to ensure that change actually follows, and the sooner the better.  

 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

 

 

 

 

How to Monitor Budgets in Legal Project Management?

If you wish to properly manage projects, you need to break down the project into tasks and sub-tasks, and assign a time volume and a budget to each of them. You then have to monitor the project by checking, in real time, that tasks are performed by the planned deadline, within the time volume and budget. If these limits are exceeded, the project manager must take action, by talking with the lawyer in charge (has she been wasting time? What happens?) or with the client (time to negotiate a change of project scope?).

But how do you actually know how much time has been allocated to which task or subtask? Many project managers in law firms find this hard to do. They have access to the timesheets of those working on the project, but how do they figure out whether "tel con with client re: project X" must be allocated to task a, b or c?

There is actually a very easy way to solve that problem. The entries in the timesheet must simply refer to the task. For example, if the project plan has defined certain tasks as task A.1.1.a, A.1.1.b, etc., the lawyer, when filling in her timesheet, should write "A.1.1.a_Tel con with client re:..." Even with simple software, this can be automated and the project manager can immediately see how much time has been billed on each task. It is really that simple: using the same task definitions in the project plan and in the timesheets.

This requires, of course, to make a real project plan, to identify tasks and subtasks, to allocate time and budget to them, to inform the lawyers about it, and enforce the discipline of using appropriate terminology in the timesheets. A small step for project management, but a big step for attorneys...

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Law firms, media, PR and a good glass of wine

Earlier this week, Finn published a clever ranking on the appearences of law firms in the Belgian media.

As marketing manager of Loeff Claeys Verbeke and Allen & Overy, I’ve had the ‘privilege’ to live the best (spectacular growth, merger with A&O…) and worst (split with Thierry Claeys’ team, Lernout & Hauspie) in press relations. The experience made me rather risk averse when it comes to marketing a law firm through the media. Lawyers must keep in mind that the mission of the media is not to promote law firms. The interests of the media and law firms can conflict subtantially. A number of sayings come to mind: “High trees catch more wind” and “Live by the sword, die by the sword”. Ask ex-lawyers of Lawfort.

Should lawyers stay away from the press? Absolutely not.  I like to compare press relations with drinking alcohol:

• Good advice is to enjoy it, but not to overdo it.
• It’s addictive. It gives a kick. The downside is that you can feel urged to spend too much money and energy on it.
• It can taste very good, it can even elate spirits for a while, but it rarely incites fundamental change.
• It can be a delightful compliment to a meal, but it should not be the meal.
• Like alcohol, bad or too much PR can result in a hangover; and finally
• People who don’t drink can live happy lives. Same for PR. This is demonstrated by the firms that are very succesful, yet not on this PR ranking.

When considering using the media to promote the firm, it’s wise to carefully consider the options and ensure that media relations are part of a bigger, thought over, marketing plan that deals with PR as one of the many tools available to market the firm.

Barend Blondé

Risk Management & Compliance Masterclass Cartoon #2

At what point does compliance become counterproductive? Check out the cartoon...

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Do Risk Categories Really Matter? Look at the Cartoon.

It is common to (try to) categorise risks in legal, reputational, financial, strategic, operational, and other categories. But is the outcome worth the effort? See the cartoon...

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Blog on Legal Strategy

If you are interested in legal strategies and if you read French, I suggest you pay a visit to the blog of Olivier Beddeleem from EDHEC Business School : http://legalstrategy.canalblog.com  It contains interesting ideas and stories about risk managemnet, legal strategies in Europe, etc.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

 

More Candidate for Writing Skills Training?

Simple, clear and concise writing is a challenge for many lawyers, including the Justices of the US Supreme Court. Check this article of the International Herald Tribune.

 

The Growing Power of In-house Counsel

Two separate reports this month, one of Deloitte and one of Eversheds, confirm what players in the legal market already know: in-house counsel gain power, both internally, within their companies and externally, in their relationship with legal advisors.   

 

From operational to strategic: in-house counsel follow the status of legal risks.

 

Cynics will say that in-house counsel are just taking advantage of the crisis and the intensified competition between law firms to increase their bargaining power. While the crisis has certainly pushed in-house counsel to negotiate discounts and alternative pricing schemes more firmly than they were used to before , this is only part of the explanation why in-house counsel are moving up the ladder.

 

The driver behind this trend is the status of the primal fuel in-house counsel manage: legal risks. For companies, legal risks have developed, over the last decade, from operational risks to strategic risks. Astronomic competition fines, brand destroying litigation, regulations and directives closing down product lines, patent wars, shareholder rebellion, penal and criminal prosecution…  For the first time in economic history, legal risks have become a permanent and fundamental threat to shareholder value and to the careers of executives and directors.

 

The janitor of legal risks, the legal department, suddenly became the guardian of one of the company’s strategic interests.  It enjoyed increased attention from CEO and Board with all the benefits this entailed: higher budgets, better remuneration, higher calibre people, direct reporting lines.  Downstream, law firms had a ball: rates soared, leverage escalated, profits per partner reached all-time highs.

 

But, as ancient tragedies abundantly demonstrate, operating close to the Sun-God does not only bring pleasure. It also brings bigger challenges, more competition, greater expectations and a tougher business environment. With the changing status of legal risks, the responsibilities of the legal department grew more important and the role of the General Counsel changed quite profoundly.

 

Our FrahanBlondé General Counsel Survey 2009 clearly showed that General Counsel key priorities are not about solving legal problems, but about pursuing strategic, organisational, and managerial goals. One of the most important and complex challenges for General Counsel is to find the right balance between being a guardian of the corporation and a business facilitator (see Antoine’s cartoon: The Homo Legalus Matrix). Another one is to define the role of the General Counsel in emerging business trends such as compliance, CSR, risk management, the Code of Conduct, diversity etc. (see our article: "Compliance : quels contours pour une nouvelle fonction stratégique?")

 

In 2008, crisis struck the financial markets and, a few months later, the rest of the economic fabric. Financial pressure hit the legal budgets and, consequently, law firms’ profits. But, again, the situation is not the same as in earlier crisis: legal departments, while suffering budget cuts as any department in the company, resist, across the board, remarkably well. The attitude of legal departments toward law firms is even more striking: not only do they put pressure on fees, but for the first time, they dare to question law firms’ business models. Some law firms have taken notice and are already responding (See our article “Legal departments and law firms: a widening gap?”). Change is in the air. We witnessed this again last week during the annual intellectual legal profession party at the Georgetown Center for the Study of the Legal Profession.

 

The Belgian Institute of In-House Counsel  (IBJ-IJE): a new force in the Belgian legal landscape

 

Ten years ago, the Belgian Institute of In-House Counsel  (IBJ-IJE) was established. We see a clear link between the evolution of the role of in-house counsel and the increasingly compelling presence of the IBJ-IJE on the Belgian legal scene. Few people could predict the impact the IBJ-IJE would have: over the last decade it has become an intellectual meeting place for attorneys and in-house counsel, it has spun networking and word-of-mouth and it has inspired in-house counsel with innovative ideas on legal management.

 

 

Barend Blondé

Antoine Henry de Frahan

 

How to Price Advice?

What Are Your Clients Paying You For? Are they paying you for doing specific things for them (such as a training, an audit, a report, etc.) or are they paying you for being their advisor?

Example: A client wants to set up a training program for her staff. If you are in the business of selling training programs, this is an opportunity, and you will do your best to close the deal and get the client to have the training program. If you are in the business of being an advisor, you won’t see the training program as an opportunity, even if you might eventually end up delivering the training yourself. Instead, you will see a business decision that your client is about to make, and you will focus not on getting her to buy the training program, but on helping her make the best decision in relation to that training program. It may very well be that the best decision is to not have the training program, because the staff does not really need it, or because they won’t be able to apply what they learn because of organizational problems, or because there are other most effective alternatives.

If you are in the business of selling training programs, that is, if you get paid for delivering training programs, but want nevertheless to act as an advisor, advising your client against doing the training program is suicidal. You don’t expect a Mercedes Benz car dealer trying to convince interested customer that they don’t need a car after all and that public transportation is more than enough. If you are in the business of being an advisor, that is if you get paid for giving the best independent advice instead, advising your client against the training program becomes the obvious thing to do. No conflict of interests.

If you are a trusted advisor, your client will pay you for the mere fact of being in an advisory relationship with her. Actually, there is tremendous value for the client in such a relationship. The decision not to make the training may be a very valuable decision (saving time, money and credibility).

The problem is that few clients are willing to pay an advisor just for being in a relationship with them. They may appreciate the value of your advise, but when it comes to paying you, they will look at the amount of training, reports and other products that you delivered to them or the number of hours you have spent “doing things” for them. In the example above, it may have taken 30 minutes max to talk the client away from her training illusion, saving so thousands of euros that would otherwise have been wasted.  Does that mean that the advisor should be paid a sum equal to 50% of this hourly rate? It does not make sense.

As a seasoned, trustworthy advisor determined to make a living as an advisor and not as a seller of products and services, you need to set your pricing model in line with your line of business. It does not make sense to use product-based pricing for delivering value that has nothing to do with products. The value is not in the product or the services, but in the relationship, that is, in the ability for the client to check ideas with you, to test decisions before making them, to get challenged by you. Hourly rates don’t make sense here.

A better way to solve the pricing issue is to agree on a period of time, from three months to one year or so, and agree that the advisor and the client will be in an active relationship during that period. Both parties have the responsibility to be proactive. The client can’t blame the advisor if she never involved him in any discussions. The advisor however has the duty to come up with ideas, make suggestions, share thoughts even when not solicited. Eventually, you need to agree on a fixed amount to be paid for this relationship. It must be large enough so as to be a much better deal for the advisor than billing his time, but it must be small enough so as to offer a nice return on investment for the client. No rules, no formula, but a shared feeling of making a good deal.

Defining an appropriate pricing model for an advisory relationship is a thing, but getting your client to understand it and adhere to it is quite another. Anyway, you won’t be able to convince the client if you haven’t figured out the system yourself first.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Logical Idealism

Organizations are like Mr Hide and Dr Jekyll. There is always the rational face and the irrational face of the organizational, all in one.

The rational organization is all about logic. It starts with a vision supported by fact-based analysis, it translates into a strategy and an organization down to into plans and processes. It’s all articulated, logical, and aligned. It’s about concepts, plans, methods and tools.

The irrational side of the same organization is quite different. It’s all about politics and psychology, power struggles and territorial disputes, pride and prejudice, and even sex (sometimes). It’s about friends and foes, ambitions and clash of ambitions. It’s about tears and sweat. In short, it’s about humans.

The two dimensions always exist, but not in the same proportion. in some organizations the rational dimension prevails. These organizations are very well organized, strategies are spelled out, job descriptions are up-to-date, business processes are everywhere, etc. The organization is a perfectly oiled machine, and there is not much room for political games or structural emotional unrest. People know what they have to do, where they belong, the rule of law prevails, those who play political games are excluded because there is no need and no room for political intrigues.

In other organizations, it’s just the opposite. It’s all about politics and backdoor diplomacy. It’s all about clans, hidden agenda and feudalism. It’s all about stabbing in the back, seducing, and being on the right place at the right time. There may be a document called “strategy” somewhere, but nobody cares. Policies, if they exist, are nothing more than wishful thinking, and the organizational chart is chaotic. People who care for those things are seen as futureless paper-pushers. These are not places for emotionless technocrats or for managerially correct executives, but a place for warlords and courtisans.

There may be all sorts of variations between these two faces of the organization. Some organizations look like they are the rational type and have the full display of vision, strategy, values, processes and so forth, but when you scratch below the surface. it’s completely political and emotional. Some organizations may look totally chaotic and lawless, but things are actually working well and despite its apparent madness the system is effective and predictable.

The important thing, however, is to know the rules of the game. “Logical idealism” is a mistake that many young professionals do (as I did). They think that rationality and logic are the drivers of organizations, and are blind to the real power game that actually sets things up.

Young and naïve managers are not the only victims of logical idealism. Many consultants also suffer from it. They believe that a strategic vision, organizational charts, business processes and action plans are the remedies to all organizational diseases. As we all have experienced, they are not. Growing as a consultant means to grow in the awareness of the double identity of organizations (and individuals), and to learn to swim effectively into this double reality.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Creative Ways to Define Your Market

Many attorneys define their market by they do, as in "I am doing copyright" or "I am doing real estate". This is the continuation of university, where "law" was divided into "contract law", "commercial law", etc.

Another, client-centered way of defining your market is to define what clients you work for and what needs you meet for them. The two above examples will become "I help high-tech companies protect their intellectual capital" or "I help real estate developers to manage risks."

Some firms find it difficult though to define their market in this client-centered way, because every lawyer is doing something different. Of course, if the firm is a labour law boutique, defining the market is easy because the specific market of each attorney in the firm is the same as the firm's. But when in the same firms, each attorney is working for different clients in different areas to fulfill different needs, it becomes tricky to explain what the firm is about.

Time to be creative. What criterion to use? An example: the type of client relationship that you have. Or the pricing system. That is becoming the core feature of your firm and what links all lawyers together: a certain philosophy, a particular approach to client relationship, etc.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Strategy Made Simple

You have a strategy if you can answer the following questions:

• What clients do you want to have?
• What needs or desires of your clients do you want to fulfill?
• What do you offer to fulfill these needs or desires?
• What positioning do you want to have in your market?

Antoine Henry de Frahan

The Emotional Cost of RFP

The problem when you use requests for proposals is that you necessarily have to say "no" to the all of the respondents except one, and who likes to do that?

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Why General Counsel Call on Law Firms

Because:

-    They don't have the manpower in-house

-    They don't have the expertise in-house

-    They have the manpower and the expertise, but they want a second opinion.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Reporting Lines

Do lawyers in the business units report to the CEO of the business unit, to the head of legal at HQ, or to both of them? This is a critical question for the standing of the legal function in a company, with clear cultural differences: in US companies, in-house counsel tend to report to the general counsel. In French companies, they tend to report to the CEO of their business unit. Some companies try to combine both with a matricial reporting system differentiating between "functional reporting" and "structural reporting. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Why Don't We Work More for You?

If you want to get more work from a client, try the question: "Why don't we get more work from you?"

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Looking for a Market Opportunity?

Advice to law firms: I have met two general counsel of major companies this week who are both lacking adequate "legal watch" services. What they want is to be informed about legal developments relevant for their business, both actual and potential (what's in the pipeline). They don't seem to be able to get this from their law firms. 

There are many reasons why law firms are not able or not willing to provide this service:

-    Law firms see legal watch as a non-profitable activity. And indeed, general counsel are not willing to pay fortunes for that service. Tip: if you want to offer that service, think carefully about organization, leverage and efficiency.  

-    Law firms tend to delegate legal watch to junior professionals without experience in the relevant sector. That may result in a very basic type of legal watch, totally useless to the in-house lawyers. What general counsel expect is more than that: insights, analysis, prospective, opinion about what's happening and what's coming up. TIP: get senior attorneys involved to benefit from their insights and analysis.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

High End Commodities

We have come to see the legal market as a superposition of three different markets: a market for standard services ("commodities"), a market for expertise, and a market for big, strategic transactions or litigation. We often represent these three markets as a hierarchy: commodities at the bottom, strategic transactions at the top, and expertise in the middle. (This also reflects the differentiation in hourly rates). There may be more to it, actually.  It may be wrong to believe that commodity work is necessarily low-end and at the bottom of the pyramid. There is a market segment for "high end commodities", and you will find a lot of it in banking and finance work.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Three Questions to Save Training Money

Do you know precisely what you want to improve?

If your answer is "management" or "communication" or "negotiation", you haven't done your homework yet. What exactly do you want to improve? Exactly what performance needs improvement? What specific behavior do you want to enhance?

Are you convinced that improving it is a priority?

There are so many nice things to learn, but so little time and budget available for learning. It is easy to waste your time while having a good time). But you can have a good time AND make a great use of your training resources. Make sure training will focus on what really matters both for your organization and for the participants. Is there a compelling reason for this training? Is it really important to have it now? Does it efficiently support the strategic objectives of your organization? Is it a "must have", or just a "nice to have"? What do you risk if you don't do the training?

Will better skills lead to better performance?

Sometimes, the reason for poor performance has nothing to do with lacking skills. If I learn to swim, my swimming performance will be zero if I don't have a swimming pool. If I learn creativity, I won't be able to use it and be more creative if my boss is a risk-averse tradition lover who won't leave me any room for innovation. Training is very often a bad solution to a real problem. Don't make that mistake. Make sure the bottleneck is indeed about skills, and not about anything else such as lack of strategic focus, inefficient organization, conflicts among decision-makers, laziness, lack of motivation, etc.

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Stop Database. Start Connectivity.

Knowledge sharing is like the Loch Ness Monster. Everybody’s talking about it, but who has actually seen it? The sad truth is, it does not work. At least the way most people are trying to do it. The good news is, it can work if you shift your focus from producing and storing content to connecting people.

Databases: the end of an illusion?

Enhancing knowledge management within the law department is on the to do list of nearly all the general counsel, and has been there for ever, but execution is lacking. Let’s face it: it is wishful thinking. There are many possible explanations:

-    People are not producing the standard documents, not updating the templates, or not filing them properly in the database;

-    Documents exist and are properly filed, but quality sucks and nobody wants to use them;

-    The filing system is so complex that none really knows how to use it, so the hell with it;

-    It does not make sense to use a NDA written to meet City standards for a due diligence of a family business in Slovakia;

-    Lawyers only trust documents they have sweat on themselves;

-    Lawyers are reluctant to give up for free and without any kind of recognition the outcome of their work. 

Whatever the reason, despite huge efforts and investments, most of the time the database initiative eventually crashes down or produces lilliputian results compared to the hopes and the investment.

Connectivity is the key

Smile! There is an alternative. Stop thinking about templates, standard documents, state-of-the art opinions, etc. Stop thinking about how to file everything that everyone knows or has ever produced. Stop dreaming about building up the ultimate corporate library where lawyers will be able to find top quality, up-to-date and user-friendly documents and models for everything they need. In other words, stop thinking about content. Think about people instead.

When it comes to knowledge sharing, focus on sharing first, on knowledge after. It is not about building and centralizing content, it's about connecting and empowering people. It is about creating opportunities and platforms where colleagues can meet and interact, discuss, share, ask for help, and provide help. It is about making sure that people know each other and what they do, and have a chance to bring on their concerns, ideas, projects, questions to the community. With Web 2.0, technology is now offering amazing tools to do exactly that. But it is not just about technology. Old style networking works wonders as well!

Thinking about people instead of content, going for connectivity instead of a database, is a frightening move for the general counsel. You loose control over content. You don't control what people are asking to each other, what answers they give, and how they interact together. But did you really have control before? Everyone was using their own documents anyway, because the database never worked. So, are you loosing something else than an illusion or a wish of control?

Knowledge sharing that works is about creating a vibrant community. It is fun, interactive, ever-changing, it works in real time, and it saves everyone the over-boring and painful perspective of producing and updating for the rest of their life an entire library of templates. Who can beat a social network? Not a database, for sure.

Antoine Henry de Frahan