Establishing the Strategic Value of the In House Legal Department

Abstract

General counsel serve an important strategic role in acting as boundary spanners between the lawyer mentality and the business perspective. Bridging the gulf between lawyers’ and managers' respective mental models will represent a decisive factor in creating innovative organizational processes by combining legal tactics with managerial insight. General counsel, through their dual responsibilities as legal counsel and business value creators, are now denoted as “strategic partners” within organizations. There is a lack of consensus, however, among in-house general counsel with respect to techniques that will alter unreceptive managerial viewpoints toward the strategic value of the legal department in the corporate setting. The purpose of this article is to develop such a consensus by outlining the recommendations of in-house general counsel from a 3-round Delphi study generated in response to following open-ended question: What types of practices will help in-house lawyers demonstrate how the legal department brings strategic value to the company?

Keywords: legal strategy