Competing With Your In-House Colleagues
A growing in-house team can bring growing pains and tension.
When I first started in-house, our division’s in-house team was small. As in, myself and my boss small.
It’s safe to say I was both her favorite in-house employee and the brightest legal mind she had working for her. But over the past couple of years, we have added a half-dozen new attorneys to the team. And while this is great for our division and our ability to add value to the organization, it has not boded well for my lock on being my boss’s best attorney.
With each new in-house attorney added, the awkward dance of feeling each other out begins. In Biglaw, the pecking order is usually well defined. The number of years at the firm, graduating class year, rank, and school all help establish the hierarchy.
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But in-house, such metrics are irrelevant. Younger attorneys routinely manage older ones, school pedigree matters far less than experience, and, frankly, knowing the right people in the organization does not hurt either. Which is to say each new attorney enters the organization on a relatively equal playing field. And since all new in-house counsel are given that level of deference, so too are their personal legal styles and opinions.
This welcoming sense of semi-equality and deference to each new hire’s individual background has, without a doubt, improved our team and the quality of our collective work.
There is no feeling more comforting than having an experienced litigator join the team in the midst of a particularly difficult trial, or having a colleague with experience in human resources onboard as you have to terminate a team member. While they may not always be drawing on these past backgrounds in their new in-house roles, the ability to call on it without regard to a traditional Biglaw pecking order has proved invaluable.
But while the individual contributions they bring to the team have made us stronger as a collective whole, their arrival has not come without some obvious growing pains or tension.
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I was recently asked to take over the management and responsibility for a new team, one with almost four times as many employees and operational significance to the organization. Although I was humbled to be asked to take on this new responsibility, it was admittedly difficult to relinquish the oversight of my old team to a new in-house hire.
Each time my new in-house colleague identified an “area for improvement” to my boss felt like a not-so-subtle jab at my past performance. Any change to my past standards of work felt like a slap in the face. And like a scorned lover, nothing has stung more than when a member of my former team tells me how wonderful their new manager is.
It has also been difficult to try and strike the right balance between helping to train the new manager, by imparting whatever institutional wisdom I may have, and my difficulty in relinquishing control and exerting my opinion on how the team should continue to function. Despite this, I believe we have worked through the transition rather well, and I know my former team is in excellent hands.
As an added personal side bonus, each new hire, especially the replacement over my former team, has helped to reignite my own passion and commitment to the organization. Their new ideas and desire to impress my boss as new hires have caused me to double down on my own efforts. After several years in the same role, it was easy to accept the status quo as good enough when areas for improvement still remained. But if I wanted to retain my current favored position with my boss, I had to step up my own game to compete.
Thankfully for me I have a few years under my belt in understanding my boss’s legal preferences and quirks. And while I may have been asked to help get new in-house hires up to speed as fast as possible, I do not recall being asked to divulge these trade secrets.
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Still the boss’s favorite?
At least for a few more days.
Stephen R. Williams is in-house counsel with a multi-facility hospital network in the Midwest. His column focuses on a little talked about area of the in-house life, management. You can reach Stephen at stephenwilliamsjd@gmail.com.