Of all the key areas in which law department leaders self-graded their overall maturity and development in the recent ACC Benchmarking report, Innovation Management ranked last. How can law departments create a culture of innovation and creativity, let it thrive, and keep that culture alive? Chief legal officers (“CLO”) set the tone for their teams through how leadership approaches, how they hire, retain and promote, and, finally, the behaviors they incentivize. Explore key takeaways below from ACC’s virtual CLO roundtable on 23 July 2020.
In this Quick Overview, the intricacies of the legal department’s role in organizations’ culture journeys is examined as well as why this positions general counsel (GCs) as cultural role models within organizations.
The way to get the most out of your team members is to develop each person into a leader. In this member written Top 10, learn how to connect with your colleagues and build a team of leaders.
Savings is not a strategy. Imagine a CEO opening an earnings call by celebrating the money the company “saved” on deal counsel and due diligence by not moving forward with an otherwise strategically vital acquisition. The stock would crater because leadership would rightly be judged as majoring in the minors.
As a line item, legal spend is a minor consideration. Rather, legal spend is better characterized as a relatively small investment that enables the business to execute on what matters.
Legal spend should be dictated by business needs. Those business needs are only escalating with the explosion in legal complexity. The increasingly law-thick environment in which businesses operate is having a profound impact on corporate top lines, bottom lines, valuations, and strategic opportunities. Trying to save money on legal is myopic—and excruciatingly common.