Continuing the theme from last week: you’ve been invited to court. Not the kind of court with a judge and defendants; the kind of court with nobles and jesters, and silent threats. The kind of court where your happiness is decided by a cocked eyebrow from the right person and destroyed by a witnessed moment of humanity from the wrong person.
You’re working in-house.
To survive, you must understand some basic tenets about life at court. It is not like your lives in the pastoral villages of law firms. Some things will seem the same, but only when your position has crumbled will you be able to see that these things that seemed the same were critically different. Understand their ways and you may live another day with your head atop your pretty little neck.
Skills That Set Firms Apart
Legal expertise alone isn’t enough. Today’s most successful firms invest in developing the skills that drive collaboration, leadership, and business growth. Our on-demand, customizable training modules deliver practical, high-impact learning for attorneys and staff—when and where they need it.
1. Everyone Reports to the King.
You have one client. You have many individuals as part of your one client. Each of these individuals will either also be a client or is a person who can influence your standing. You have your direct reporting structure and you have relationships with others who report to your direct supervisor about your performance. In the end, the company is your client, but the company cannot say: “Great job” or “I appreciate all the hard work you’ve put in.” The company can’t say that. But your colleagues can. The old story of being nice to the receptionist at an interview is writ large when working in-house. You must be aware that everyone you interact with in the organization may have the ability to impact and report on your performance. This, coupled with rapidly changing organizational structures means you never know who you will be directly reporting to in the future and who influences those people, both formally and informally.
You may not be able to be nice to everyone all the time, but always be mindful that everyone can report to the King. As at the courts of old, if telling on you gets them ahead, they have little reason not to do so.
2. The Kingdom is Not Just.
Decrypting Crypto, Digital Assets, And Web3
"Decrypting Crypto" is a go-to guide for understanding the technology and tools underlying Web3 and issues raised in the context of specific legal practice areas.
No matter how good your Monarch may be, the running of the kingdom cannot and does not revolve around justice: it revolves around remaining in business. The kingdom is surrounded by two bodies of water: The Ocean of Truth and the Sea of Falseness. The kingdom only remains above water because it sits atop a narrow spire of survival between the two waters where they mix and become inseparable. Many lawyers went to law school to pursue a passion for justice: to create a world with clean and clear water for everyone. As in-house counsel, you will have to live in a world where seawater coexists with the ocean.
Your colleagues will craft their positions in ways where you feel misled, or you think are misleading to others. You may have to do the same. Business is not justice. This is not to say that deception is appropriate for business or in-house counsel. It absolutely is not. But the fact is, industry does not operate within the rules of evidence or civil procedure. The kingdom does not operate for justice. It operates for business. Your colleagues are not all lawyers and may not abide by the standards of professional conduct applicable to lawyers. You have to find a way to adapt to the environment because neither the ocean nor the sea will change its nature to align with your sense of justice.
In other words, your colleagues have an interest in moving their opportunities forward. If they see you as an obstacle, they will find other ways to progress their opportunities and succeed. You will likely have to work again with those who circumvented you before. A business kingdom has many citizens with various agendas; context and circumstances craft each person’s “truth” regardless of which ocean or sea it comes from.
3. Don’t Fight Every Competing Noble.
You’re being nice to everyone. You have an appropriate level of paranoia of your colleagues waiting to attack. Your vigilance pays off: you see a predator circling, ready to attack one she perceives as weak within the court. Resist the instinct to attack first. Business is built on optimism. Optimism that the buyers are out there, that the new ideas will meet and exceed expectations, optimism that there is always more pie to be had. If you attack this noble first, another will quickly take her place putting you at risk again. However, if you train that baroness to leave you alone, you set an example to the other members of the court. If you are going to attack, make sure the fight is worth it. If a fight isn’t worth the risk, use the potential attack as an opportunity to secure your position.
Practically, this means that you can’t take what happens with your colleagues personally, but you do have to figure out how to work with them. The informal power hierarchy means that you will experience colleagues attempting to assert their dominance in any situation. As in-house counsel, you very likely will need these colleagues in the future to facilitate your own job duties. You will have to interact with these colleagues again. You can become resentful, paranoid, and angry, or you can accept that you live in a kingdom with those who are less than noble, and train them to refrain from putting you out of favor with the King and the rest of the court. By recasting potentially aggressive interactions with your colleagues as “opportunities” for improvement, and by avoiding the confrontation with a non-dominant “noble,” you preserve your own rank and position and show others that a threatening display will not cast you out of the privileged court circle.
Office politics are present at most every work environment. The relationship an in-house lawyer has with his colleagues is unique, and his success often depends on his ability to navigate the treacherous relationships at court. The more comfortable you can become with the realities of the potentially dangerous liaisons and roles of in-house counsel, the less frustrated you will be when your colleagues try to use you as a pawn in their own game.
Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at [email protected].