Scaling Legal Resources to Skyrocketing Demands

The Point

1. Corporate law functions perennially experience chronic, gaping shortfalls between the resources they need to do their job and what they actually possess.

2. Without an unlimited budget, a corporate law function must therefore scale its resources to keep up with soaring legal and regulatory demands.

3. To get at-scale impact, Legal needs disciplined systems and processes by which its people work together to accomplish what no single one of them could do on their own.

4. The disciplined systems and processes required for at-scale impact need a proven executive in charge — not an individual whose career has been limited to law practice. Continue reading

The Point

As I suggested in Part I of this series, scaling a company’s resources to meet soaring legal and regulatory demands is, ultimately, a management challenge. Because at-scale impact — using limited resources — won’t happen without disciplined systems and processes by which colleagues work together to accomplish what no single one of them could do on their own.

Successful companies usually have individuals who have proven themselves as managers. They might be serving in a corporate function like finance, or serving as a line manager in a business unit. Or, in the past five years to ten years, proven managers may be found among a new breed of professionals: “legal operations” executives.

But such proven managers are rarely found among lawyers, whether general counsels or others in-house or in firms. Unhelpfully, lawyers in-house and outside counsel “manage” in dysfunctional ways peculiar to their profession: rewarding excessive time spent on tasks and overstaffing work teams with inexperienced attorneys — actually disincentivizing efficiency.

Therefore only proven executives should manage the corporate law function. Attorneys should play a supporting role in Legal, confined to their technical skills in law and regulation. Continue reading

Articles Posted in Scaling Legal Resources to Skyrocketing Demands

Corporate Law Functions Can’t Keep Up w/ Soaring Demands, So Legal Has to Scale Its Capacity: Why Lawyers Can’t Manage Scaling — Part III of IV

The Point

Corporate Law Functions Can’t Keep Up w/ Soaring Demands, So Legal Has to Scale Its Capacity: C-Suite Must Say What It Wants from Legal — Part II of IV

The Point