New general counsel checklist: top 10 ways to succeed

The first months in any new role have a tremendous effect on how an employee is perceived and can determine that employee's success. For a new general counsel (GC) who reports to the CEO and the board of directors, this effect is amplified because of the high profile of the position. The following new general counsel checklist will guide you through the first few months on the job to ensure success.

1. Get to know your stakeholders

It's important to get to know stakeholders to make those valuable first connections and to understand how they define success for the legal department. These are the people that judge your performance, and as always, first impressions count.

Key steps in understanding stakeholder expectations include:

• Identify the key stakeholders.
  
• Make time to meet with each stakeholder.
• Ask each stakeholder their assessment of what success looks like.
• Get a clear understanding of how they plan to measure your success.

Aim to complete these steps in the first couple of weeks. However, you should quickly assess the legal department, including short-term vs. long-term changes (staffing, resources, IP, etc.), as well as any additional responsibilities for the department.

2. Get to know your internal clients and their teams

You should also make time for your internal clients, the executives in charge of your supporting business units. Discuss what they think the legal department can do to make their jobs easier and how to deliver the best legal services. This is the critical start of building your network within the company that, at the executive level, might matter just as much as your job performance with your company's success. Also, it is helpful to get to know your internal clients' teams since they are the "boots on the ground" — aiding you in the navigation and carrying out of your internal clients' needs.

3. Know and assess your legal team

Next, get to know and assess your team. Meet with the team to share with them your short- and long-term vision for the legal department. Take time to get to know the following things about your team:

• What is their current workload, as well as variations in their workload that regularly occur?
• What are their pain points with their workload and workplace?
• What are their thoughts on how they can deliver better services?

The benefits of team feedback don't end once you're established in your role. Set the tone for ongoing team feedback by: 

• Let your team know that you'll seek their feedback regularly.
• Empower them to take personal ownership of your department initiatives.
• Establish weekly team meetings to touch base on various projects and determine staffing or other needs.

With a clear understanding of your team and open communications, optimize their productivity and enable your priorities to be successful.

4. Look for ways to let your talent thrive

After the assessment of the capabilities of your department, look for ways for them to use their talents. For example, your tech-savvy, young corporate attorney would relish implementing a new contract management system or enjoy working on M&A deals. Give them those projects to the extent that’s possible. Maybe someone shows talent in managing law firms, so let them help define or improve your department’s billing guidelines.

Aim to surround yourself with talented people who commit to working with you to achieve the department's goals. Remember, aligning people with their strengths not only builds efficiencies — it also builds morale.

5. Learn your company's business

Learn about your new company's industry and businesses, as well as its business model and philosophy. The GC's job isn't solely to manage legal work and advise on legal matters; you are now a business partner. Knowing a company's business often isn't necessary in a law firm because you work on a discrete legal matter in your field of expertise.

In a company (especially at the GC level), knowing the business is essential for how you approach your legal work, especially around risk management and compliance. As a GC, you serve as a bridge between your company's strategic management initiatives and its risk mitigation efforts. One of your primary roles is to protect the organization from operational legal risks from any potential business decisions.

Compliance is also within your purview. While your company may dedicate regulatory compliance departments, the GC holds the responsibility for designing and overseeing regulatory compliance programs, communicating regulatory issues to stakeholders, and performing regular audits of compliance efforts.

6. Understand your company's culture

Company politics, communications with upper management and within your team, and business lingo varies greatly from company to company. Not understanding the corporate culture quickly makes you stand out, and not in a good way. Also, it’s important to know the groups that are most valued and thus have the most power within the company (Hint: It's usually the group that drives revenue).

Different groups have different cultures as well — the sales team's culture may differ completely from the engineering team's culture, for example. If you previously worked at a law firm, the whole corporate environment may come as a shock, even if you've worked with corporate clients for decades. If you're coming from another in-house gig, especially a long-term position, you'll need to remember that a "win" at your old company may not count in your new environment. For example, some companies define success based on individual performance, while others may place more value on the entire team's success. Be prepared to quickly learn and adjust to your new company's culture.

7. Assess your law firm relationships

The next relationships to assess are those of your law firms, specifically the law firms with which you do the greatest amount of highly visible work. Determine whether you're comfortable with them and, if not, bring in firms that you trust. There's no better time than having a new sheriff in town to clear out dead wood and re-establish pricing and performance expectations.

Firms that you trust, value  client service, and deliver the highest quality of work with the greatest value should emerge as the winners. All law firms say they value client service. Delivering the client service promise consistently is something that few firms tend to do. Once you are comfortable with your firms, let them know how work will be done moving forward with budgets, billing guidelines, and, ideally, project management techniques.

8. Assess your infrastructure

In our digital age, it's critical to ensure your company's IT infrastructure can protect your legal department. This includes considerations around cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and data protection. With powerful new tools that require working with technology partners, this is a complex task. When considering generative AI, for instance, ensure a third party doesn't allow the data you use in your prompts to be fed into their wider system, which could place at-risk, sensitive client or company information.

Here are some other best practices for evaluating your infrastructure:

• Work proactively with business and IT to assess risk. Taking a collaborative approach when shaping policies, programs, and procurement processes to mitigate threats before they become costly incidents.
• Identify opportunities to save money and measurably increase efficiency. Why measurable? You've already talked to your stakeholders to determine what they consider wins for your position, now you must show them how to achieve this success. The only way to do so convincingly is to cite data and metrics to back up your claims.
• Evaluate the operational and product delivery process of your legal department and its tech supports. How do your attorneys stay on top of their legal matters? How do they communicate with their law firms? Many matter management software solutions allow the creation of matters in one place where outside counsel can connect and add matter updates, documents and important matter information. Then, you can get regular reports on these matters, so you will never be in the dark or surprised about what is going on in the legal department.
• Track the value of software tools. Measure the value of these tools in a variety of ways: decreasing the cycle time for various types of matters, reducing the overall estimated liability of the company, reducing claims due to targeted training by the legal department, and more. Furthermore, this software saves in-house attorneys time approving invoices because it's automatically routed to invoice approvers — no carrying invoices from office to office for approvals. The decrease in invoice approval time improves the relationship with the department's law firms and allows for a negotiated early-pay discount. Money saved from instituting alternative fee arrangements may be tracked in this type of system.
• Tap specialized software tools as needed. Another area where adopting technology increases efficiency in the department is an IP management system, if there is a great deal of IP work. A contract management system for contract-heavy departments saves an untold amount of time with researching contracts, clauses, and contract dates for your in-house attorneys. If your company receives a great deal of legal holds, consider legal hold software to save a demonstrable amount of time as well. It all depends on your stakeholders' priorities, the nature of your company and its business, and the structure of your legal department.

9. Pair with your human resources director

One aspect of a GC's role that sometimes gets overlooked until it's too late is internal employee matters, which otherwise fall under the human resources (HR) department. However, it's never too early to review HR's policies and procedures, ensure managerial compliance with anti-sexual harassment measures, and revise offer and termination letter templates to manage the volume of employment matters that arise during your tenure. On an ongoing basis, work together with HR to stay apprised of ongoing and new matters to mitigate exposure and company liability.

10. Understand where your legal dollars are being spent

Another quick win is assessing the department's overall legal spend and how to best manage it. Again, many matter management software packages include an e-billing component, which enters all legal invoices the system. There are several advantages to doing this. The first is you will have a complete view of the spending of the legal department that is accurate and up to date — reports you can't get from your AP department. Second, you can actively manage the spend going through the system, like outside counsel rate changes, expense code violations and matter budget violations, which are automatically flagged in the invoices. The money saved is reported out to your stakeholders.

Bonus: Make a plan

If you've made it through your new general counsel checklist, it's time to make a six-month plan with the goal of building credibility and creating departmental momentum. A new GC needs to get some quick wins during this period to let stakeholders know they're on the right track. They also need to continue to get buy-in from the team that is helping implement these changes. A couple of keys to consider here; first, you can't boil the ocean in six months, so focus on a couple key areas to achieve wins and make sure to achieve them. Second, make sure that these wins matter to your main stakeholder(s) because a win doesn't make a sound if your boss doesn't care to hear it. A substantial win is the goal here, but ideally it should tie into your overall, long-term business priorities and re-enforce new behaviors that will instill in your department.

Coming into a legal department and creating immediate change is a difficult prospect for any GC. Getting to know all the key players in the company, the company's culture and business, and your law firms are the keys to understanding where you should focus your efforts during the first six months. Once you have implemented your plan, clearly communicate it to your stakeholders and your legal team to set expectations and get everyone on board.

Quick wins in a legal department often include achieving legal results, increasing efficiency, saving money, and better allocating resources. Using technology (or using it better) is an important tactic in achieving these goals. After six months, if your network is in place and you've achieved your planned goals, you’ll establish your credibility and lay the groundwork for pursuing other long-term goals for the legal department and the company.