Smart Collaboration for In-house Legal Teams

Author

Dr Heidi K Gardner

Managing director

Sian O’Neill

Smart Collaboration for In-house Legal Teams is published by

Globe Law and Business Ltd

3 Mylor Close

Horsell

Woking

Surrey GU21 4DD

United Kingdom

Tel: +44 20 3745 4770

www.globelawandbusiness.com

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press Ltd

Smart Collaboration for In-house Legal Teams

ISBN 9781787423503

EPUB ISBN 9781787423510

Adobe PDF ISBN 9781787423527

Mobi ISBN 9781787423534

© 2020 Globe Law and Business Ltd except where otherwise indicated.

The right of Heidi Gardner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying, storing in any medium by electronic means or transmitting) without the written permission of the copyright owner, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS, United Kingdom (www.cla.co.uk, email: licence@cla.co.uk). Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

DISCLAIMER

This publication is intended as a general guide only. The information and opinions which it contains are not intended to be a comprehensive study, or to provide legal or financial advice, and should not be treated as a substitute for legal advice concerning particular situations. Legal advice should always be sought before taking any action based on the information provided. The publishers bear no responsibility for any errors or omissions contained herein.

Table of contents

Figures

Tables

I. Introduction

1.The four vectors

1.1 Across disciplines within the legal group

1.2 With the business, including front-line managers, executives and governing boards

1.3 Between the legal team and other corporate functions

1.4 With external parties beyond the organisation

2.Research methodology, confidentiality and terminology

3.In this Special Report

II. The case for collaboration

1.Benefits of in-house legal teams’ collaboration across all four vectors

1.1 Higher-quality, lower-risk solutions

1.2 Innovative outcomes

1.3 Operational efficiency

1.4 Attract, engage and retain talent

1.5 Diversity and inclusion

1.6 Individual benefits: networking, recognition, legacy

III. Real and perceived obstacles to collaboration

1.Barriers

1.1 Time pressures and the drive for efficiency (27%)

1.2 Interpersonal distrust and territoriality (22%)

1.3 Knowledge gap about your legal, business and functional colleagues’ expertise (17%)

1.4 Lack of skills and confidence to initiate and carry out collaboration (15%)

1.5 An unsupportive culture (11%)

1.6 Lack of trust in others’ competence (8%)

2.Closing thoughts on barriers

IV. Building collaboration within the in-house legal team

1.From vision to strategy

2.Hiring collaborative talent

3.External hires – the three stages

3.1 Preparing to hire

3.2 Recruiting collaborators

3.3 Integrating those new hires

4.Collaborating across geographical divides

5.Building leadership skills

5.1 Tie actions and directives to the larger vision

5.2 Create an open, learning-centric environment

5.3 Build your team’s future-ready competencies

5.4 Create exposure opportunities for others

5.5 Offer timely ‘suggestions’ (instead of anxiety-producing feedback)

5.6 Celebrate success

6.Making time for collaboration

7.Closing thoughts on collaboration within the team

V. Smart collaboration with business executives

1.Earn a seat at the strategy table

1.1 Be more than just a lawyer

1.2 Develop and share future-focused insights

2.Claim your seat at the strategy table and use it effectively

2.1 Overcoming imposter syndrome

2.2 Building and using authentic gravitas

2.3 Help shape the style and tone of interactions across the executive team

3.Build two kinds of trust

3.1 Building interpersonal trust

3.2 Building competence trust

3.3 Climbing the Trust Staircase

4.Concluding thoughts: collaborate by building relationships

VI. Smart collaboration between Legal and other corporate functions

1.Proactively build relationships – while the pressure is lower

2.Paths to building cross-functional relationships

2.1 Formal relationship-building

2.2 Informal relationship-building

3.Explore others’ perspectives

4.Building the bridge

4.1 Spend time consciously focused on the other person’s (or group’s) agenda

4.2 Develop and demonstrate genuine curiosity

4.3 Probe the politics (sensitively)

5.Lead collaborative efforts for higher performance

5.1 Employ disciplined project management to maximise use of time and other resources

5.2 Distinguish between task conflicts and relationship conflicts

5.3 Use your influencing skills rather than your authority

6.From responder to thought partner

VII. Smart collaboration with external stakeholders

1.Degree of joint experience

1.1 Mature, deep (stakes: high; innovation need: high)

1.2 Familiar (stakes: low; innovation need: low)

1.3 New (stakes: low; innovation need: high)

1.4 Strong (stakes: high; innovation need: low)

2.Collaborating with outside counsel, including law firms and ALSPs

3.Collaborating with regulators

3.1 Establish trust and credibility with regulators through upstanding conduct and an effective compliance regime

3.2 Help shape the regulatory environment

3.3 Proactively participate in voluntary regulatory framework discussions

4.Collaborating with legal team counterparts in other organisations

5.Closing thoughts: collaborating outside the company

VIII. Smart collaboration: the ongoing opportunity

1.The ‘dark side’ of collaboration: an over-committed organisation

1.1 The Four Ms

2.Final thoughts

Notes

About the author

About Globe Law and Business

Figures

Figure 1. Four vectors of collaboration for in-house legal teams

Figure 2. Benefits of cross-domain collaboration

Figure 3. Business outcomes of employee engagement

Figure 4. Collaboration and performance – added value from smart collaboration

Figure 5. The reinforcing cycle of collaboration benefits

Figure 6. Barriers to collaboration for in-house legal teams

Figure 7. Collaboration and external hires – two paths

Figure 8. Three-stage process for external hiring

Figure 9. Multi-tiered benefits of role-based competency grids

Figure 10. Preference gap between giving and receiving feedback

Figure 11. Leader’s reaction to subordinate’s good news

Figure 12. How CEOs view Legal: cost vs value-add

Figure 13. The Trust Staircase

Figure 14. From responder to thought partner

Figure 15. Avoiding the performance pressure trap

Figure 16. Smart collaboration with external actors: degree of prior joint experience

Figure 17. The danger zone

Figure 18. Measure it: collaboration across many teams

Tables

Table 1. Paths to cross-functional relationships

Table 2. Signs of excellent and deficient collaboration within outside firms

I. Introduction

In-house legal teams – whether they work in a corporation, private entity, government or non-profit organisation – have the opportunity to help shape the strategy and fortunes of their larger enterprise. But with that opportunity comes an obligation: to bring specialised legal knowledge to bear on real-life challenges, in ways that not only limit risks but also help the organisation create distinctive advantages and capitalise on them.

As the legal, business, technological and regulatory environment becomes increasingly complex, members of in-house legal teams need to team up with colleagues across departments, disciplines and geographies to harness the different kinds of specialised expertise each multi-faceted problem requires. This integration of knowledge is what is meant by ‘smart collaboration’.

Over the last decade, our research at Harvard University – and far beyond – has demonstrated the links between smart collaboration and significant commercial and talent-related outcomes. Our empirical analyses show that organisations and individuals who engage in smart collaboration generate higher value for their clients, and earn commensurate rewards. In-house legal teams produce higher-quality, more holistic and more commercially sound solutions by teaming up across traditional organisational silos. Bringing engineers onto the regulatory team at an automotive company, for example, greatly enhanced that company’s autonomous vehicle initiative. Elsewhere, a bank’s employment lawyers collaborated with regulatory experts to find a solution to balance competing demands for privacy versus transparency in cases when an executive was fired.

In these cases and many others like them, the legal knowledge at the heart of the issue is greatly enhanced when it is combined with other kinds of inputs. There is a concurrent benefit, as well. Most of the experts involved in these processes of discovery reported significant personal gain – ranging from job satisfaction to recognition to career advancement – from that involvement.

But as lawyers in business are all too aware, attempting to collaborate across long-established boundaries can be messy, risky and costly. Teamwork is almost never easy or inexpensive – the risks, coordination effort and start-up costs are real – so unless professionals have a clear sense of why they’re working together, and a firm grasp on how to increase their chances of success, they may not be engaging in smart collaboration.

This Special Report speaks to both of those issues: why and how. It seeks to help in-house lawyers overcome organisational and cultural barriers to reap the benefits of smart collaboration, and provides a set of tools to help them achieve this important end.

1. The four vectors

In-house legal teams need to collaborate across a range of different groups. We describe the varying types of collaboration as ‘vectors’ (ie, they have both direction and magnitude), each of which presents its own challenges and opportunities.

1.1 Across disciplines within the legal group

Most in-house legal teams today comprise a range of legal and non-legal experts, such as pricing specialists, data scientists, technologists and others. Many experts bring to the table their own jargon, mindsets and approaches, and this can create obstacles to collaboration, especially for in-house lawyers who are already under very real time pressures.

1.2 With the business, including front-line managers, executives and governing boards

To optimise the value of their input, in-house lawyers need to join a business discussion early enough to integrate their knowledge, rather than merely react to decisions already taken. In most cases, lawyers need to earn their credibility with business partners by demonstrating not just their legal expertise – which is taken for granted – but also their commercial acumen.

1.3 Between the legal team and other corporate functions

Cross-organisational collaboration is essential when navigating complex issues like digital transformation, cyber security, reputational concerns and the like. Trying to bridge silos can create turf battles unless objectives, potential benefits, resources and credit are all clearly laid out up front.

1.4 With external parties beyond the organisation

Truly partnering with outside bodies, ranging from regulators to tech vendors to law firms, can provide significant value, because all players bring unique perspectives to the problem-solving effort. Finding common goals takes both trust and time, however, and – depending how relationships have evolved – both can be in short supply.

2. Research methodology, confidentiality and terminology

My research over the last decade, based at Harvard University but conducted at research sites literally around the world, demonstrated the links between smart collaboration and strongly positive outcomes, with implications for both the institutions and individuals involved. My first focus was professional service firms and healthcare institutions, all of which agreed to give me extraordinary access to the mechanics and finances of their organisations. I published those finding in my book, Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos.¹

Figure 1. Four vectors of collaboration for in-house legal teams

Source: Gardner & Co. Actual, disguised data from two global PSFs

As a natural follow-on to that work – and in response to enquiries from general counsel and business executives – I next focused on the potential of smart collaboration in the in-house legal team context. To understand that context, we surveyed more than 400 in-house counsel and legal team members, and interviewed an additional 100-plus general counsel and corporate executives across four continents. The industries ranged from aerospace, accounting, mining, or software to government and academia; the sample included companies with legal teams as small as a few people to those with well over a thousand, in some cases dispersed across the globe. We also held in-depth workshops with dozens of GCs to test ideas as they emerged from the research.

This report also draws on many other sources of research and ideas. To understand the human underpinnings of smart collaboration for in-house legal teams, we apply research from the field of organisational behaviour, as well as other areas of social science such as psychology, sociology, economics and behavioural decision-making. We also build on the work of many great thinkers and practitioners in the legal arena – in particular, Ben Heineman, former general counsel at GE, and Bjarne Tellmann, GC of Pearson.² To acknowledge the many, many people who contributed in various ways, this report often refers to ‘we’ or ‘our’ thinking; I alone take full responsibility for any errors.

A further word about the terminology we use in this Special Report. From time to time, I use the shorthand ‘Legal’ instead of ‘in-house legal team’ or ‘legal department’ but that term is meant to include the full diversity of people on the team, including legal and other professionals. Unless otherwise stated, I use the word ‘collaboration’ as shorthand for ‘smart collaboration’. And finally, I often use the words ‘company’ or ‘corporate’ to denote the overall organisation, but my ideas apply to a broader range of entities than simply the corporate sector. Yes, there are real differences in how collaboration goes on in those different settings – but the similarities tend to outweigh those differences.

3. In this Special Report

This report takes a purposefully practical approach to our subject. It focuses on the attitudes, resources, tools and techniques that can help in-house legal team members become smart collaborators.

Chapter II makes the case for collaboration. It demonstrates how smart collaboration can help the legal team solve complex problems more