Business Thinking
In today’s business climate it’s imperative for in-house teams to demonstrate value to the business.
In a regular column, Paul Hughes of Cranfield School of Management tells us why and how.
When I was talking recently with the GC of a multinational operating globally, they outlined the purpose of their legal function to me. They said it existed to ‘provide high quality legal services tailored to the organisation’s needs, carried out by more knowledgeable lawyers than could be secured from external providers, yet at a much reduced price than would be paid if solely using an external supplier’.
They went on to explain that the ‘highly administrative or specialised legal work was outsourced, while the core service (comprised mostly of commercial contract drafting, processing, revision and review, corporate legal compliance, managing employee matters from a legal perspective, and numerous other advisory actions on the legal requirements of organisational operations), was maintained by the in-house team’. I would think this broad description is a reasonable summary of what many – if not most – in-house lawyers reading this might describe their own function as doing. If so, well done, you are echoing the words of a highly successful global GC.
