The Opportunity for In-House Lawyers

Firefighting is a common activity for in-house lawyers, but you have to ask yourself who was the arsonist? Was it a business colleague who has caused the conflagration? If so, you should look at ways of preventing a repetition by raising their awareness, rather than wearily racing to the scene of the next fire. Was it a legal colleague or you who caused the blaze by failing to manage expectations and effort?

An in-house lawyer can make a huge contribution to management of legal risk in his or her business by doing the following:

• help identify the areas of legal risk which merit priority
• contribute to establishing processes for regulatory compliance
  
• contribute to establishing processes for relationship management with contracting parties and third parties
  
• develop training sessions and reference materials to raise legal awareness.

It is important to invest time in distilling how best to handle a particular transaction or situation, so that members of the department are not improvising.