September 19, 2024 Update: Since our original post (below), we have stayed on top of issues that General Counsel and in-house legal teams face. Here are some of the issues plaguing GCs right now:
Budget, Recruitment and Staff Retention: GCs need to find the best staff, ensure they retain them while not exceeding their (shrinking) budget. Creative GCs are exploring nonmonetary rewards and recognition for their in-house legal team. They are also looking to ensure the lawyers work on high value and engaging work, opting to delegate the lower value work or outsource it. Higher value work offers more satisfaction to the legal team.
More and more lawyers are seeing in-house jobs as a short-term step in their career, feeling there is not as much room for growth, recognition and increased compensation. GCs need to create a path to career growth, personal satisfaction and recognition to retain lawyers and avoid the costs of offboarding, continual recruitment and onboarding.
Another issue GCs are dealing with is the rising costs of law firms, which make it harder to work with firms they have historically called on for subject matter expertise or overflow work. The concept of fractional lawyers is increasingly appealing to GCs when they look to find the knowledge and experience they need (and as always keep costs within the budget)
Leveraging technology is a sound way to increase efficiency. However standing up that technology, learning it, training staff, managing licensing and compliance and troubleshoot the technology, often exceeds GC’s bandwidth and in many cases, their knowledge.
Looking to fractional lawyers that already utilitize technology to complete the required work, is a cost effective solution that General Counsel are exploring. Fractional lawyers are a good option for this.
GC must also show their value, not just in the legal department but as someone who adds value on the business side and is able to align company objectives with everything they do. Increasing better outcomes for less money requires thinking outside the box. If GC can do this and bring solutions to the business, they increase their value to the company. Areas that GC could excel in, to add extra value to the company are finances and accounting; including balance sheets, profit and loss etc. An important area that GCs could and should expand into is data, including privacy laws, data analysis, drawing insights and actionable steps to take from data. ESG is also another growing area where GC can step up and take over.
To sum it up, as GC face these and other challenges, they need to be innovative, agile and and visible to the business team and executives, as someone who provides solutions.
ORIGINAL POST FROM 2023:
General Counsel are feeling the pressure of budget cuts and increased need for their services, especially in areas of the company that they typically were not involved in historically. Stress is mounting as they navigate their new areas of focus within companies.
Legal is no longer there simply to mitigate risk, they are being asked to have a greater voice in company operations and to contribute to the bottom line.
They are seeing increasing security and compliance issues, as security threats increase and worsen. They are expected to get in front of these issues, rather than deal with the aftermath of a problem.
Let’s break things down a little:
World events, such as the Russia-Ukraine War impact global business. Economic sanctions on Russia created various economic and trade restrictions. GCs are required to understand the sanctions and ensure corporate compliance.
In this inflationary environment, General Counsel must manage costs that are rising quicker than billing rates are.
Privacy and data security includes issues like hacking, malware and ransomware. Problems results resulting from employee error (often related to phishing) and the risk of breaches are a close second.
Litigation includes labour and employment issues – which are on the rise. Staff retention is a factor since the pandemic saw a significant shift in employee’s mindsets. Employees are less willing to accept aspects of a job that they don’t like and are more likely to move on. There were also issues related to work at home policies, enforcing guidelines, constructive dismissal issues and vaccination policies being created and enforced.
GCs are required to learn new technology and manage all the components that come with that – things like licensing, set up and integration cost, seats being uses, onboarding and offboarding and more. Each of those issues can impact cost, security and privacy of data. On the flip side, there are still a large number of corporate legal departments that don’t have the budget to purchase the technology they really need.
Risk, crisis management and business continuity are big issues.
Government, regulatory compliance, and investigations are requiring more attention from General Counsel. Regulatory issues reach globally, creating more stress, and the need for increased knowledge about international policies.
Intellectual Property, including enforcing IP rights, which can be difficult. Trademark and copyright infringement are another area of focus.
Corporations are increasingly focused on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues. General Counsel are being asked to support and advise executive and board members, as needed.
Corporate legal departments are involved in decision making and are being asked to make strategic recommendations. To accomplish everything that is currently required plus the added responsibilities, they are going to require a lot of knowledge, experience and specialization.
As they navigate their new responsibilities, their work becomes cross-departmental. For example, they may work with IT, Human Resources and Sales/Marketing when dealing with crisis management.
It’s a constant balance to stay on top of their current work, while also making sure their priorities and actions are aligned with corporate goals and expected outcomes.
Digging a little deeper into the various areas they are working in, the following items are emerging as areas of concern:
- Appropriate staffing to handle potential crisis
- Product Liability
- Bankruptcy
- White collar investigations
- Lack of necessary technology
- Patch/upgrade management
- System errors
- Patent trolls
- Economic factors
With a new seat at the table, responsibilities have increased for corporate lawyers, in addition to the new strategic input, GCs are being looked to as a communication leader, communicating with interdepartmental issues, such as privacy, data security and to demonstrate strong leadership skills while effectively managing resources.
General Counsel are expected to pivot on the fly, access information and have the legal expertise needed to create solutions to whatever the latest issue is that is blowing up.
Fractional Legal Support Offers Solutions to the Issues Plaguing GCs
Fractional lawyers offer subject matter expertise, access to technology and the extra bandwidth needed to tackle expanding workloads, without the commitment of an employee or on-going retainer.
Learn more about how CEO Law is helping General Counsel in Canada.