The purpose of this article is to help general counsel make the right
analysis and the right decisions on matters relating to teamwork and team
spirit in the law department.
In short, it is always right to pursue external teamwork, but often a
waste of time to pursue internal teamwork. General counsel should find out
exactly what their department need, and that is often something else than
internal teamwork: effective management, organization and process; networking;
or simply more fun, togetherness and recognition.
Internal and
external teamwork
It seems common sense that team spirit is a good thing and a goal worth
pursuing, doesn't it?
In many situations, working as a team is indeed a necessity. The job
simply can't be done without people working together. Examples? Football: there
is no winning unless the team wins. Another example? Web applications. Forget
it unless the designer and the programmer are really working together. No
teamwork, no performance. In these situations, there is an objective and
fundamental need for teamwork, and promoting team spirit becomes a strategic
priority because it fuels teamwork.
But do law departments fit into that picture? Is teamwork of the essence
of legal work? Is it intrinsically linked to high performance in legal matters?
To answer this, you need to distinguish external and internal teamwork. External
teamwork happens between an in-house lawyer and people outside the law
department (CEO, business managers, finance professionals, HR manager, outside
counsel...). Internal teamwork happens among the members of the law department
themselves.
My opinion is that there is obvious added value in external
teamwork, but the value of internal teamwork is more questionable.
External teamwork
is always essential
There is no question that the company will be better off if the lawyer
assigned to a particular matter or project works hand in hand with colleagues
from other departments working on that matter or project. Most in-house lawyers are already convinced
of that and eager to cooperate (there are still some in-house lawyers suffering
from the locked-in syndrome, but it is a species on its way to extinction). The
challenge is rather to convince the colleagues outside the legal department to
involve the lawyers. Developing a strategy to develop external teamwork, in
particular by giving non-lawyers good reasons to involve lawyers in their work,
should always remain a top item of the general counsel priority list and a
closely watched indicator.
Internal teamwork:
what’s the point?
But pursuing the goal of internal teamwork is more problematic. I
see many general counsel eager to reinforce internal team spirit, but unable to
spell out the common, fundamental objective that requires team work. They think
they need team spirit and teamwork, but what for?
How much operational integration do the members of the law department
really need to perform well? Maybe each lawyer is working with different
clients, or on different practice areas, and the whole idea of a
"team" does not really make sense, because the individuals are not
interdependent to achieve their goals (they can do it all by themselves) and
because there is not a single shared goal, but a multitude of different matters
and projects that different lawyers are tackling on their own.
The eagerness to enhance team spirit is going nowhere if there is no
objective necessity for teamwork. Will the company be better off if in-house
lawyers are working as a team among themselves? Not sure. Should team spirit be
branded as a value as such in the law department? Only if you come up with a
good reason for it.
Actually, I see many fine law departments where the lawyers don't work
as a team: each lawyer is working on her own files with her own clients, under
the supervision of a senior lawyer as the case may be, but with limited
interaction with other lawyers. They may not have a lot of internal teamwork,
but the job is done and well done, the clients are happy, and the lawyers as
well. And that does not prevent them from having good relationships with their
colleagues in the law department. So, no internal teamwork, but so what? Who
cares? Where is the problem?
I am not saying that internal teamwork is always an irrelevant concept
for law departments; what I say is that it is a mistake to take if for granted
that teamwork and team spirit are necessary and good for the legal department.
My recommendation to general counsel who wants to “do team spirit” is
therefore to step back and answer the following questions:
- Why
exactly do I wish more team work and more team spirit in the department? The
answer must be very practical and down-to-earth. Don’t take “vision”, “mission”
or “values” for a satisfying answer.
- What
dead-serious damage is threatening us if we don’t work as a team? Here again,
accept only very practical and tangible answers.
- What
obvious and tangible benefits would we or the company get from more teamwork
within the law department? Is teamwork the best way to get these benefits?
It is dangerous for the general counsel to launch a teamwork initiative
if there is no compelling reason for it, because that teamwork initiative will
most probably not work, and that will hurt the credibility of the general
counsel. All the team spirit in the world will flow in the work to be done does
not require or seriously benefit from teamwork. Team spirit for the sake of
team spirit is a lost cause.
But then, why do so many law department nevertheless spend time on team
building seminars? If not internal teamwork, what is it that they really need?
Find out what you
really need
You might very well come to the conclusion that:
- Your
department really needs teamwork and team spirit. The lawyers of the department
have to work together to get things done, because projects are complex and
require a multi-disciplinary approach, or for whatever other reason that is
making the lawyers fundamentally interdependent to get their work done.
- You
don't need internal teamwork at all. Each lawyer works on different matters,
and it does not make sense to want them to work together. They'd better focus
on external teamwork. That’s not a bad news for the management of the law
department. Actually, you can ensure a high and consistent level of performance
across the law department without teamwork. Effective supervision,
well-designed processes, training programs, strict recruitment standards,
performance management are different means available to the general counsel and
don't have much to do with team spirit and teamwork. In other words, you don't
need team spirit to make the law department perform.
- You
need internal teamwork, but only for specific, limited tasks. You may for
example be creating a working group within the law department, and teamwork is
necessary within that working group until it has reached its purpose. I would
call it "circumstantial teamwork", as opposed to "structural
teamwork" where teamwork is of the essence of what the law department is
doing. The point is, you don’t need to make too much of a fuss about it. Be
pragmatic. If you set up a working group, check out whether it works and give
the right impulsions if necessary, but don’t embark your department in the full
“team spirit journey”, it would be a counter-productive waste of time and
credibility.
- You
don't need internal teamwork, but more connectivity among the members of the
law department would cheer up everyone and empower them to better do their job.
It helps to know one’s colleagues, to know who is doing what, to know where to
find what sort of information, etc. Basically, what you want is not a team, but
a club: a cool place that people are happy and pride to belong to, where
they make and develop effective contacts, share information as they wish, etc.
- Maybe
the members of the law department feel isolated. Their expressed need for more
teamwork actually translates a need for more “togetherness”. They want more
social interactions, more fun, and the feeling of belonging to something big
and inspiring such as a “team”, etc. “Team spirit” in that case is not linked
to objective performance, but to psychology and motivation. There is no real
need for teamwork, but there is a real and shared desire for more fun, more
social interactions, and a more rewarding self-image. I am not suggesting that
these needs should be ignored. On the contrary. But the desire for more
togetherness, however legitimate it may be, is not the same as the objective
need for teamwork.
Antoine Henry de Frahan
