Managing Legal
The Point
Among people of various talents and skill sets required to conduct the corporate law function, who should the C-suite and board choose to be the one in charge?
- Attorneys in outside firms and in-house alike assume that only a licensed, practicing attorney can run Legal.
- C-suites and boards have accepted this assumption for the most part, and act accordingly.
- Attorneys are trained in, and skilled at, comprehending legal technicality, and then communicating their knowledge to clients, drafting documents, and representing the business before courts and government agencies. They are not trained in, or skilled at, management of people, processes, and budgets.
- In 2022, with Legal’s costs skyrocketing, and with staggering enterprise risks posed by unchecked litigation and increasing regulatory demands, today’s Legal operations are too complex, and its talent requirements too varied and sophisticated, to be run by anyone other than a proven professional manager.