The report, Mapping the Moral Compass, is the second stage of an initiative to assess the ethical approach of and pressures on the in-house profession. Based on 400 responses, the report documents what was already apparent anecdotally: employed lawyers face considerable and specific ethical pressure points. While those tensions are not obviously more severe than in private practice, there is a far less developed framework to manage them. Continue reading “‘Trust the lawyers’ won’t cut it”

Let’s start with an assumption: we will reach peak in-house. Though the in-house profession has hugely expanded over the last 15 years – those in the private sector growing threefold since 2000 to over 16,000 solicitors in England and Wales by 2015 – in-house legal teams cannot keep growing forever.

At some point companies will tire of employing more lawyers. At some point lower cost providers than law firms will make such expensive recruitment harder to justify. At some point the money for expanding legal budgets (and the available data in the US and UK shows they are still expanding) will run out. And, as the joke goes, when the money runs out, it is time to start thinking. Continue reading “Working smarter”

It is not easy to be an in-house lawyer. Thank goodness, however, because if it was why on earth would any business want to employ a lawyer? In fact, why would any lawyer go to the trouble of that expensive and gruelling training and working hours that risk burnout; then, just when they reach the point they can capitalise on their powers, decide to hop into a featherbed of routine, low-risk work that is more ‘admin’ than law? Surely the job being difficult is part of the attraction? Difficulty is also some justification for lawyers to be among the most expensive bodies on the payroll. Continue reading “The lexicon of inefficiency”

Can Dave Lewis save Tesco? Will Bob Dudley turn BP around? Journalists and financial analysts ask these questions, and headline writers dutifully stick them at the top of the page. But the questions are absurd. We should stop asking them.

Consider an international business employing tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. There are country managers, divisional heads, and a senior executive team, all reporting into a board of directors that sits above the lot of them. No big decision should be taken by a chief executive on their own. Good corporate governance requires that checks and balances are applied, in particular by the board. Continue reading “If it is lonely at the top for your CEO, sort out your reporting lines and help”