Managing and Developing Your Career as an In-house Lawyer
Published: 2023
Pages: 80
eBook: 9781787428539
This Special Report seeks to provide practical ideas and tips on how a busy in-house lawyer can actively manage their own development. The aim is to help them perform more effectively in their current role and also prepare them for promotion or a move elsewhere.
Managing and Developing Your Career as an In-house Lawyer by Ian White and Simon McCall is a companion to their report Your Role as General Counsel: How to Survive and Thrive in Your Role as GC. It seeks to provide practical ideas and tips on how a busy in-house lawyer can actively manage their own development. The aim is to help them perform more effectively in their current role and also prepare them for promotion or a move elsewhere.
It covers:
Taking responsibility for your own development;
Being a businessperson as well as a lawyer;
Doing an MBA – or recreating the MBA experience by learning from other people in the business;
Moving into a leadership role;
Honing key personal skills – delegating, giving feedback, listening, motivating;
Becoming a coach or mentor to your team;
Developing your career beyond the GC role – within or outside your organisation; and
Taking on a non-executive director role.
This Special Report is essential reading for any in-house lawyer wanting to continue learning and developing and enhance their career prospects. It is relevant for recently appointed in-house lawyers all the way up to more established GCs.
Table of Contents
| Cover | Cover | |
|---|---|---|
| Title | 1 | |
| Copyright | 2 | |
| Contents | 3 | |
| I. Introduction | 5 | |
| 1. How it all came about | 5 | |
| 2. Who has this Special Report been written for? | 5 | |
| 3. Why you need this Special Report | 6 | |
| 4. How this Special Report is set out | 7 | |
| 5. A way of looking at development | 9 | |
| II. Moving in-house | 11 | |
| 1. Why? And is it for you? | 11 | |
| 2. What makes working in-house different? | 12 | |
| 3. No longer a one-way street | 14 | |
| III. Learning about other functions – business and management skills | 15 | |
| 1. What skills are needed and where can you acquire them? | 15 | |
| IV. Skills for the in-house lawyer | 19 | |
| 1. Developing your team | 19 | |
| 2. Moving upwards | 32 | |
| V. The lawyer as coach and mentor | 35 | |
| 1. Coaching | 35 | |
| 2. Mentoring | 42 | |
| VI. Developing your career away from law (but in a legal environment) | 45 | |
| 1. What does the new organisation need from you? | 45 | |
| 2. What will you be doing? | 46 | |
| 3. Conclusion | 48 | |
| VII. Developing your career in-house (but not as a lawyer) | 49 | |
| 1. Getting to be GC or a similar role | 49 | |
| 2. The options when you become GC or a senior lawyer | 50 | |
| VIII.Developing your career after law | 59 | |
| 1. The importance of managing your career life | 59 | |
| 2. One reason to develop a post-law career: you may be working at 103! | 60 | |
| 3. Or is it just luck? | 62 | |
| 4. Developing a different type of CV | 62 | |
| 5. Where to get help | 63 | |
| 6. Becoming a non-executive director | 65 | |
| IX. Some final words of wisdom | 67 | |
| 1. Advice and tips | 67 | |
| 2. Concluding thoughts | 72 | |
| Endnotes | 74 | |
| About the authors | 76 | |
| About Globe Law and Business | 78 | |
| Notes and ideas | 79 |
Ian White
Board effectiveness consultant and coach
Programme leader, Cranfield Non-executive Director programme
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-w-a411321/
Ian White is a former chief legal officer and company secretary for both listed and private companies. While he has spent most of his career as a lawyer, he also has an MBA and has spent some time working as a strategy consultant.
Ian now works as a consultant, coach, trainer and facilitator. His previous in-house experience has led him to develop expertise in corporate governance, working with boards, leaders and lawyers on effectiveness, enhancement and performance. He spends much of his time reviewing and advising boards and management teams on structure, dynamics and how they can excel in leading their organisations. While his main focus is on FTSE 100/250 and major private companies, he also works with professional services firms, public sector bodies and a number of charities and other not-for-profit organisations.
Ian also helps lawyers, both in-house and in private practice, to work more closely and effectively with their clients, encouraging them to think of themselves as business people first and lawyers second.
Simon McCall
Director, Sherwood PSF Consulting Limited
[email protected]
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mccallsimon/
Simon McCall is a management consultant and business coach. He works mainly with lawyers, in private practice and in-house. Over 30 years, his consulting assignments have included helping in-house departments to develop a compelling strategy and law firm management teams to work more effectively together. Simon has designed and led management development programmes for lawyers at associate and partner level. As a coach, Simon has enabled lawyers to explore and plan changes to how they work and how they build successful relationships with colleagues.
Simon has a law degree from the University of Cambridge and qualified as a solicitor in 1980 with Lawrence Graham. He then worked in-house with Houlder Offshore (an oil drilling business) and American Express. He has an MBA from the Cranfield School of Management. Simon was a principal tutor on the Nottingham Law School MBA in legal practice and did his coaching training with The School of Coaching.