In-House Counsel

In-House Counsel: Minimum Competence, Schminimum Competence!

When you're in-house, your non-legal colleagues expect you to know everything.

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Like most health care attorneys, I have been glued to C-SPAN the past few days, attempting to follow the latest news on the debate currently waging in Washington.

Bear with me, I promise this is not a post on the current health care debate. Believe me, I know if I am growing tired of reading about it in the news, others must be as well.

Rather while following the debate, I became painfully aware that while I know and understand a great deal about health care and even insurance law, I know virtually nothing about the intricacies of the Senate’s rules of order. This fact was driven home when my CEO sent me a late-night text over the weekend asking how someone called the Senate parliamentarian could strike several provisions from the bill on their own.

I had been following the news close enough to have a general idea of the Byrd rule and was able to muster a halfway coherent answer. But it dawned on me that, for the duration of the health care debate, my company’s leadership would be turning to me for much more than just my latest analysis of the latest draft bill.

When you are in-house, your non-legal colleagues often do not appreciate the fact that most attorneys are well versed in only a few narrow areas of the law. To them, you are an attorney, and you should be able to help them get out of a speeding ticket in the morning, draft their last will and testament during lunch, and help them sue their derelict landlord in the afternoon. Never mind these are three distinct areas of law; your colleagues’ default opinion is that you must know how to do all of them.

Which brings me back to my CEO’s text. While I was flattered he valued my counsel not only on the contents of the bill, but what came next for it as well, I simply could not reply that he had better consult a constitutional attorney. I had to dive in the find the answer.

Even if it is well outside of your self-professed scope of expertise, when you are in-house, you can bet when no one else has an answer for a particular question, it will eventually make it your way. After all, you are a lawyer and should know the answer.

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So although I can think of a thousand other ways I would have wanted to spend my time over the past few days, I have spent them immersed in the study of the antiquated rules of the Senate. From reading law review articles to various civics blogs, I have attempted to get up to speed to ensure I am able to answer the variety of Senate-rules-related questions I am sure I will receive in the coming days.

And although I am not obtuse enough to think I can foresee the future of health care and what other areas of the law may impact it, you can bet I am going to start to branch out a bit on the selection of my future CLEs.

Sure, it is naturally more comfortable and entertaining to sit through a CLE or indulge in extracurricular reading on a topic you are comfortable with. But who knows, venturing outside of your preferred area of competence might just help you craft a little more thoughtful answer to the next late-night text from your CEO.

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.

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