Small Law Firms

Do You Have A Red Team?

What's a Red Team, and why is having one essential for lawyers?

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Litigation can be a battle. You marshal your forces and attack the opposing party. But there is a long lead time from the filing of a lawsuit to the commencement of a trial. During that time you lay out your strategy. How to approach the case, handle witnesses, and develop a compelling narrative and theme.

Transactional work is ultimately adversarial as well. Your client against another. A merger, a divorce. Making sure each word is the right word. All clauses are included, the deal fair (but mostly for your client). And you need to get it right the very first time.

Yet, you can’t be surrounded by yes-men. While working on a project it is easy to develop a cocoon. A selective filter bubble that only incorporates what fits in neatly with your narrative. But you have to push back against the inclination to only hear what is good and convenient and instead organize dissent.

You need a Red Team.

A red team is an independent group that seeks to challenge an organization in order to improve effectiveness.

The key theme is that the aggressor is composed of various threat actors, equipment, and techniques that are at least partially unknown by the defenders. The red cell challenges the operations planning by playing the role of a thinking enemy.

Some of the benefits of red team activities are that it challenges preconceived notions by demonstration; they also serve to elucidate the true problem state that planners are attempting to mitigate. Additionally, a more accurate understanding can be gained about how sensitive information is externalized, as well as highlight exploitable patterns and instances of undue bias with regard to controls and planning.

Red Teams are heretics. They try to buck expectations and throw a monkey wrench into solidified plans with little manpower and small resources. Red Teams are generally smaller, underfunded, and placed at a disadvantage from the get-go. All things being equal, they are supposed to lose.

But a Red Team’s weaknesses also give rise to: creative problem solving, lateral thinking, intense team cohesion, strategic surprise, and deconstruction of dogma. Essentially, a Red Team takes the role of advocate for a disadvantaged adversary. Which is exactly what you need to cultivate within your office — especially when you feel confident about your position.

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Red Teams provide criticism and dissent, which are incredibly valuable in a law practice. As Sir Winston Churchill said:

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

When handled correctly, the intent behind criticism is to encourage growth. That is, a Red Team exists not to tear down and belittle your position, but to expose weaknesses and gaps in your positions and plans. It’s a valuable tool to have and something that can be implemented relatively painlessly, even in a small firm. To begin to understand and implement Red Teaming, you only need to look at the core principles that underlie the concept.

Eight Core Principles of Red Teaming

  1. Create the right conditions. Red Teaming needs an open, learning culture, accepting of challenge and criticism.
  2. Plan Red Teaming from the outset. It cannot work as an afterthought.
  3. Support the Red Team. Its contribution should be valued and used to improve outcomes.
  4. Provide clear objectives for the Red and Blue Teams.
  5. Fit the tool to the task. Assemble an appropriate red team and ensure individuals have the right skills and experience to do the job.
  6. Ensure that the Red Team works with the Blue not against them, but that the Red Team approach is critical and appropriately adversarial.
  7. Focus on key issues. Red Teaming should contribute quality thinking rather than quantity.
  8. Poorly conducted Red Teaming is pointless, may be misleading and engender false confidence.

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So when developing positions within the office, also take the time to develop a Red Team to attack your positions. By taking the time to have someone actively attack your positions, you will be much more prepared before contact with opposing counsel.

It doesn’t matter whether it is litigation or transactional work, having something leave your office without it facing criticism or scrutiny is amateur at best. It leaves you open to surprise and unforeseen consequences. But with proper Red Teaming, you can hopefully nullify most surprises that could occur.

For a more formal overview (albeit military focused), see the UK DCDC Guidance Note: A Guide to Red Teaming (PDF).

Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.

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