As we live in a fast-paced world today, what skills will a corporate legal team need to succeed in the modern in-house industry?

Corporate counsel must be familiar with new technologies that may impact the legal profession as they are developed, and new regulations issued to address such a new work environment. The pandemic, for instance, accelerated discussions on the adoption of electronic signatures globally due to the new work from home reality. These developments required in-house lawyers to be adaptable and react quickly to enable companies to address colleagues’ demand for new business practices more tailored to remote work. It is not just a matter of corporate counsel being familiar with new regulations, but also explaining them to different internal stakeholders and assisting with their implementation within the institution, which often entails joining discussions that are not necessarily of a legal nature. For this reason, project management skills are also key to succeeding in the modern in-house industry. I also believe that being digitally savvy will be of great value for corporate lawyers as I expect AI and machine learning tools to continue to increasingly impact the legal profession.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

As in-house lawyers, we interact with a variety of audiences that may include bankers, contractors, operations and sales teams, product specialists, among others. It is important to bear in mind that business partners have different work styles, backgrounds and personalities. Understanding your audience and being adaptable is key to providing adequate legal service. Advice should be clear, concise and efficient, rather than offering long and theoretical legal explanations, we should aim at providing practical advice. Avoiding the use of technical terminology and striving to learn the business and the language used by business partners within your company helps the development of clear communication between corporate counsel and business partners.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values? Are you likely to reconsider what firms you work with based on this?

Very important. For a company’s values to be meaningful, they must be observed in real life and not just written on a website. Implementing core values requires not only internal action but also the engagement of vendors, including external lawyers. While we cannot always determine how a specific law firm deals with values important to us, such as diversity and inclusion, internal lawyers should ask questions and work with management to develop initiatives that promote our core values. One example is that many companies have been prioritising working with law firms focused on recruiting and retaining diverse talent and have partnered with them to address issues faced by under-represented communities.