Legal Business assesses the options for senior in-house counsel looking to swap ideas (and business cards) with their peers
Buy-side lawyers are a continual target for a whole host of networking and marketing ‘opportunities’ that may – or more often may not – be useful. As private practice law firms look for ways to deepen their client relationship in a market where that relationship is increasingly de-personalised, others have clocked on to the fact that, to get close to private practice, you need to pull strings among their clients.
Set against the backdrop of shrinking budgets, increasing responsibility and a packed diary, it is hardly surprising that in-house counsel’s attitudes to networking range from selective to downright averse. ‘Work is mad and then if I want to have a life outside of that, it becomes nigh on impossible to go to events too,’ comments one weary GC.
This reticence also stems from the fact that many senior in-house lawyers already have packed diaries and resort to informal coffees that are less difficult to justify than a day out of the office. ‘You’re not the asset so people will always be asking, “What good does it do us you going to these things?”’ says Steve Kuncewicz, former GC of online fashion site Boohoo.com.
But once you get over the why nots, the right networking opportunities are extremely valuable.
Glorious isolation
For the solitary and versatile GC, networking can provide both comfort and answers. ‘Sometimes it can be a bit of a lonely position,’ says the GC of CPA Global’s seven-lawyer team, Ruth Daniels. ‘You’re a subject expert in your company but having that sounding board and validation for what you’re doing is pretty valuable.’
‘Quite often you’re a kind of jack of all trades – you have to deal with everything – so if you’re looking at putting a compliance programme in, you’re looking at a risk management programme or you’re building out a team in a specific area and you’ve never done it before, events can be good for working these things out,’ adds Daniels.
The corporate structure means networking can be more important for GCs than their private practice partner counterparts. ‘Of course it depends on your set-up,’ says Kuncewicz, ‘but there is no substitute for genuine human interaction with either another GC that you know or lawyers that you trust who can give you a steer, tell you if you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing and just preserve your sanity a bit.’
You’re hired
But the benefit of these sessions goes well beyond the rhetoric. For GCs like Orla Muldoon of Kellogg Europe, who chooses not to use a panel of law firms, connections that shine in these situations may end up carrying out external legal work. ‘It just makes it easier to do business,’ agrees David Isenegger, GC of Centrica Energy’s 25-strong legal team. ‘These are people who know and understand each other, who you might do business with in the future.’
And in these days of heightened external scrutiny, Isenegger points out that it is not just private practice lawyers who are ambassadors for their firms: ‘It’s not just that regulation is changing, it’s also that the aggressiveness of regulators, prosecutors and the press is increasing. For good or ill, major companies don’t command the instant public respect they did 20 years ago. So we have to adjust the way we approach the world outside our companies to deal with these changes,’ he says.
Rules of thumb
While the choice of events is personal, there are a few boxes that need to be ticked.
‘Time is tight, I tend to go to ones where there is a specific purpose to the discussion,’ says deputy group GC at Barclays, Michael Shaw, who organises the Practical Law Company (PLC)’s annual law department forum for in-house lawyers.
Sessions that help demystify new legislation and regulation are also welcome. Over the past few years, a number of law firms have started to host well-received GC programmes, including Eversheds’ Sharing in-house expertise (SHINE) programme and DLA Piper’s What In-House Lawyers Need (WIN).
As one GC observed, most legal conferences have some degree of service provider input, which can be useful, they say, in helping the in-house community understand new pieces of legislation and regulatory developments.
However, they are also aware there could be an ulterior motive. ‘A number of law firms are increasingly looking at the power of trying to lever off facilitating and organising networking opportunities between general counsel and in-house counsel,’ says Deutsche Bank’s associate GC, Chronis Anoustis. ‘It can obviously be a good business development tool for the firm, as well as offering insights into what is on the minds of in-house counsel.’
Relationship building
Recession or no recession, good old-fashioned hob-nobbing is alive and well, and networking events provide the perfect platform for a catch-up with peers and senior figures outside of the legal profession.
‘It’s good for benchmarking in terms of your own career, to see where you are against your peers and to find out if people are getting specific training or if they’ve had specific support. It’s useful to take that back to your own organisation,’ says Daniels.
Being involved in networking events can also offer the GC an opportunity to pass on some of their own experience in the form of mentoring. ‘It’s a genuine privilege to be part of something that could be training people to make them more employable,’ says Kuncewicz. ‘With it they have a bit more of an eye towards the kinds of things they should be doing.’
But it is important to spread the net wider than just legal peers. ‘Networking for the sake of networking can be useful but lawyers tend to fall into the mistake of only networking with other lawyers,’ says Shaw. ‘What is more important for those of us in business to do is to see other people in other activities. That is harder, of course, because you have less of a common language so you have to push yourself more.
‘They can be people in business, learning a bit more about how some of our stakeholders approach some of these issues and what they want from their lawyers. It’s about getting to know the sorts of people who might, frankly, hold the keys to getting other roles or finding other opportunities. They might be finance directors, CEOs, headhunters, a broader range of business people.’
Non-legal peers working across different industry sectors often face similar issues in different markets around the world and can provide a valuable alternative perspective. Shaw says: ‘Depending on the type of in-house role you have, in financial services organisations the general range of risks that we face, the challenges affecting financial institutions at the moment, those are not just for lawyers, and it is better to go to people with a different perspective on those sorts of issues sometimes.’
On the flip side, networking can work best when it’s a tightly focused affair. Norbert Seiler, deputy GC of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), says that he keeps up with his peers at other international financial institutions on industry-specific issues at least once a month.
‘The EBRD is a very special organisation, it’s an international financial institution, of which there are only a handful around the world,’ explains Seiler, ‘so we all know each other quite well and we compare notes on many issues that arise among ourselves. We observe the issues that are of concern in one institution, that may be relevant in other institutions or are about to become active in the others.’
What else is being discussed?
GCs often report that they have to navigate hugely complex regulation, and networking provides an opportunity to untangle this web together. ‘More and more we talk about compliance,’ admits Isenegger. ‘We tend to talk about what the regulators are doing and compliance risk to our businesses.’
Each new regulation comes with its own set of dilemmas, especially when it comes to implementation. ‘Antitrust is always a useful topic for discussion,’ says BAE Systems group general counsel Philip Bramwell. ‘It’s always good to talk to peers from different industries involved in similar regulatory challenges or common problems. You get value from shared experience, certainly among large public company legal departments where there are many issues that cut across all sectors.’
For some, these sorts of discussions go further than simply sharing best practice. Seiler and his international financial institutions co-ordinate closely over emerging regulations in an effort to establish a common position, which can then be delivered back to the regulators to then be hopefully taken into consideration in shaping policy and enforcement.
‘As multi-governmental institutions, our shareholders are the same countries in many cases, so it’s very important to compare notes on issues and positions that arise, so that the same messages can go back to the shareholders as well,’ says Seiler.
Cost-saving innovations also dominate: ‘Whether it’s automated documentation systems, e-billing, tendering of legal work or managing external legal spend,’ explains Anoustis, ‘a lot of legal departments don’t have big external legal spends so this is always of interest. As well as how legal departments can move forward in terms of how can they equip themselves better in terms of outsourcing, near-shoring and offshoring using third-party vendors.’
‘We’re all struggling with how we manage to improve output of legal functions with declining resource,’ adds Shaw, ‘but it’s also about identifying what’s coming, being predictive rather than just reactive.’
However, the real value for many is the opportunity to share notes on managing, motivating and rewarding staff and building relationships: the ‘softer skills’ that most in-house counsel are not taught.
‘The more senior you get, you’re looking for the forum to discuss broader issues because probably about 50% of your role is about management, rather than about legal subjects,’ says Daniels. She singles out GC international networking group Global Leaders in Law (GLL), commenting, ‘[GLL] events are good because you have a small group of people with a bit of thought leadership and you talk a bit about broader business things like reputation management, for example.’
GLL was set up five years ago at a time when there was little else in terms of cross-sector networking events for GCs, says global ambassador for GLL Meena Heath. ‘It’s valuable because it gives you an insight into how different businesses run their legal departments and it increases general market intelligence and business knowledge.’
Social networking
While in theory social networking ticks all GCs’ boxes, lawyers’ natural conservatism, combined with the fact that most GCs were born well before the information age took hold, means it is yet to be seen by most as an interesting or viable alternative to face-to-face events.
‘There aren’t enough hours in the day! And I’m not entirely convinced of its usefulness,’ says Shaw.
Contact building site LinkedIn is one of the more widely used. ‘I’m an avid user of it’, says Daniels. ‘It’s good from a networking point of view and again that benchmarking that goes on to a certain extent. There are some quite effective IP groups, which, as a former IP lawyer, I find quite interesting from my background and also from a business perspective as well.’
However, forms of social media which require real-time interaction are yet to be widely embraced. Kuncewicz, who, after leaving Boohoo in March where he was GC for a year, now works as an IP, media and social media lawyer at Manchester-based firm Bermans, says: ‘In my humble opinion, the profession is used to work just walking through the door and all of a sudden what social media demands of you is engagement rather than just broadcast. So, if you want to send press releases out, that’s one thing, but if you’re on social media sites, the real value you get out of it is your interaction with other people.’
To Kuncewicz the benefits of social media for in-house counsel are obvious. ‘If you are a solitary GC then you don’t get a lot of room for human interaction and that’s a great source of human interaction. If you follow the right feeds into other law firms as well you will pick up updates on leading legal issues very easily, they will just walk into your inbox.’
However, the recent libel dispute regarding comments made on Twitter by the Speaker of the House of Commons’ wife Sally Bercow will do nothing for lawyers’ fears they will say the wrong thing, and many are more mindful of the pitfalls than the perks.
Bramwell comments: ‘When it comes to social media, experience would suggest that a good measure of caution is called for.
‘Most references in the mainstream media highlight outbursts that are embarrassing at best and actionable at worst. The courts have made it very clear that social media posting does constitute publication and so if you publish something you must expect to apply a normal degree of prudence.’
The tight-lipped culture in many corporates, particularly banks, also creates barriers. Banking GCs keen to send the message that Twitter is a danger to market sensitive information are unlikely to themselves be avid tweeters.
As one GC comments: ‘It’s interesting because the world’s moving on but, in the regulated areas that we work in, it’s difficult to get your head round it really, even beyond the personal risk that people take tweeting.’
It looks like GC networking will retain the personal touch for a while to come. LB
francesca.fanshawe@legalease.co.uk