Smarter Working - Practical Advice for In-House Lawyers: Recent Episodes
Lustrum Partners
Smarter Working is a podcast series exploring the challenges facing in-house lawyers and legal teams.
Although none of us can know the future, Legal should always be looking ahead- there are always new laws and regulations on the horizon that will affect your business. Beyond this, there are also broader trends and developments that we are expected to understand.
Planning and analysis are also crucial. We should be asking why we're doing things and whether this is symptomatic of wider concerns in our organisation. Like others, let's focus on prevention and not just cure
Presenter - Rick Seabrook, Panoram Digital Tech
Guest - Joel Hanson, Lustrum Partners
In Episode 3 of our Smarter Working Series, we look at how Legal must embrace the opportunities digital offers. With the help of Greg Willesden and Rick Seabrook of Panoram Digital, we consider how to develop a coherent approach to the implementation of technology. Being Lustrum, our conversation focuses on the practical issues involved and the benefits to legal teams
This episode is called Power to Our People. It focuses on the legal team’s most precious asset: its people. We consider the expectations on both those leading the team (the support and guidance they should be providing) and of team members (the personal commitments they should make to develop themselves). Perhaps, a possible byline would be “how to create meaningful careers for in house lawyers and develop the legal leaders of the future”?
This episode looks at: The biggest challenges in-house lawyers are facing:
- Legal teams in companies of all sizes being in a cycle of reaction
- Constant demands to provide more for less
- Marginalised role of ‘overhead’ functions
- Human toll of mismatched expectations and excessive pressure
- Development of people and methods
- Questionable personal satisfaction and career direction
A manifesto for change:
- Enlightened leadership–valuing people, business-savvy, capable managers
- Individual ownership – right to sustainable and career-enhancing roles; responsibility to make happen
- Smarter Working – improved processes and methods, client education, intelligent use of tech
- Planning and analysis– prepare for legal/regulatory change, understand trends, prevention not cure
- Being essential – ensuring that focus is on the things that matter and recognition for being crucial to business success
The practical steps
- Functional strategy – agreed purpose and scope, delivery of priorities and resources
- Defined career paths– set expectations for roles and support development
- Better use of technology - track activities, collect data, utilise business investment
- Plan workload – understand pipeline and manage capacity
- Look ahead – identify issues before they become problems
Coming soon on this channel is a series called Smarter Working, a podcast exploring the challenges faced by in-house lawyers and legal teams.
The podcast will help legal teams improve the quality and impact of what they do and promote a more fulfilling and sustainable career. It will also consider the most important topics and aim to both demystify these subjects and offer practical advice.
Crucially those featured in these podcasts speak from their experience and the suggestions they offer are based on approaches that have worked for them as well as lessons they've taken from those that didn't.