What does the Board want from its legal advisers?
As a result of my experience leading a company for a period earlier this year, I've been asked on several occasions to speak to groups of lawyers about the role of a company's in-house Legal Department when viewed from the CEO's chair. The exact questions that people suggest I attempt to answer vary and are phrased with more elegance but, in ordinary language, they boil down to this: (1) What is Legal's job? (2) How is Legal doing? (3) Does anyone care? Arguably, there's a danger of Legal Departments becoming overly introspective in seeking to answer these questions. Indeed, in the very first post on this blog, I asked " Why is it that, when it comes to the world of business, lawyers spend a lot of time agonising about their role and trying to articulate clearly how they add value, instead of getting on and leading their organisations?" But that was intended to be provocative and it's too harsh. Legal departments have been on a necessary journe...