In-House Tropes To Avoid

// Whether you are new to being in-house or deeply experienced and this is simply a refresher, here are some in-house tropes to avoid. These may or may not have been gleaned from an unscientific survey of business clients for their biggest complaints about legal, may or may not have been learned the hard way in the transition to being an effective in-house counsel, or may or may not be pet peeves of a particular author of blogs about in-house life.

1. Not Being Responsive

Depending on your industry and culture, things can move fast. One of the biggest complaints that business clients have is when they can’t reach legal in a timely fashion to solve their problem. While not all issues can be resolved immediately, clients can get extremely frustrated (and stop coming to you) if the only way they can talk with you is to schedule a meeting two weeks in advance or if they can only reach you within the working hours of your specific time zone.

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2. Being Too Responsive

It’s not exactly the opposite of the complaint above. Rather, this is when as the lawyer, you interrupt the client before getting all the details or jump to solving any problem (it may not be the problem) without asking important questions. This can also look like skimming an email on your phone (instead of reading the whole thing) and asking a question that’s actually already answered in the email or responding just to get it off your “to-do” list, but not really adding value, or worse, making more work for the sender to point out to you what you didn’t read.

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3. Being A Bubble-Burster

This is commonly referred to as legal being the “Department of No,” where our risk-tolerance may impede our ability to think creatively and innovatively with business clients. Another description you may have heard: “Legal is where ideas go to die.”

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4. Being A Bottleneck

This is a bit like No. 1 above but a more nuanced. This is where, as counsel, you have initially responded but had to follow up with some substantive work — like research or work with outside counsel or get alignment with others in legal — and it’s taking too long, such that “legal” is impeding progress (or at least that’s what business clients will tell their executives).

5. Over-Pontificating

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That’s just a fancy way of saying we lawyers can talk too much. Where we either wax poetic over unlikely, infinitesimal risk as if we’re getting points on a law exam, repeat what another legal colleague has said but just in a different way in an effort to contribute, or share a war story that no one cares about.

6. Master Suggester But Executioner Of None

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This trope is a nuanced version of 2, 4, and 5 above — where we, as in-house counsel, may make suggestions to be initially responsive, but in actuality are delaying analysis without examining why (aka kicking the can down the road), or worse, suggesting or making more work for others. This often shows up when we ask business clients for data or information without thinking about whether we really need all of it. Or we review a document and ask a question in the comment — but it has no significant legal bearing and were just curious but it causes some business analyst to spend hours hunting down answer. Or we make a suggestion like “this sentence should be placed elsewhere” but fail to proffer where we think it should go.

7. Potted Plant

This is a much rarer trope — but it’s the in-house counsel who seems to always agree with their legal colleagues without taking time to think or rubber-stamps business clients, especially if they are executives. Sometimes well-liked but hardly respected.

8. Combative Counsel

Last but not least, this trope is the advisor who mistakenly believes they are the decision-maker. It’s beyond being a zealous advocate and moves into “know-it-all” and “I told you so” space.

Just to be clear, none of these are good looks for us, as in-house counsel, and should be avoided at all costs.

Meyling “Mey” Ly Ortiz is in-house at Toyota Motor North America. Her passions include mentoring, championing belonging, and a personal blog: TheMeybe.com. At home, you can find her doing her best to be a “fun” mom to a toddler and preschooler and chasing her best self on her Peloton. You can follow her on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/meybe/). And you knew this was coming: her opinions are hers alone.

Topics

In-House Counsel, Meyling "Mey" Ly Ortiz