I do not mean to sound like an elitist attorney, but let’s face facts, there are a lot of incompetent people in the business world.
Not to sound too disparaging, these colleagues may be perfectly functional in a social or personal setting, but when it comes to operating in a business setting, well, they just miss the mark.
Don’t know the type? Think of the ones who routinely ask the wrong or obvious questions in a meeting, file incoherent reports, or routinely violate HR policy.
For reasons that can never be explained, incompetence does not stop at entry-level positions. Whether they happen to be liked by the boss, or helped the boss bury a body, they can be found at all levels of the career ladder.
And, lucky for my colleagues and me, they keep in-house counsel in business!
But dealing with the occasional incompetent colleague is no easy task. Since this colleague often may not appreciate the legally nuanced answer we are used to providing, being blunt and definitive is the only course of action, even if it is uncomfortable at first.
Case in point, I was recently called into one of my colleague’s office who had a great idea he wanted to share with me. He told me he had just had lunch with a friend of his who works at one of the smaller insurance companies we regularly deal with.
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His friend mentioned his company was looking to sell to a larger insurance company in the near future and casually suggested our two companies work together to streamline our billing process in the short term.
He suggested if we were to agree to reduce the amount of claims we sent them on a monthly basis, they would increase their time requirement for us to file a claim. They would be able to pay our claims quicker if there were less of them, and this would help out their small team as they really focused on selling the company.
And best of all, according to my colleague, they would agree to do all of this without amending our contract. In fact, all he had to do was call him back and we could start today!
It was clearly lost on my colleague that his friend was using him as a pawn in an attempt to inflate their books prior to sale. And while it was slightly adorable how trusting he was of the company, such a drastic change in business operations would never occur without a contract amendment. The very notion that we would do so is laughable.
While I often advocate for in-house counsels to politely hear out any idea from their colleagues to encourage them to return for future counsel, some ideas are just so bad, they deserve to die a quick death.
Ideas like agreeing to legally dubious book-propping for an insurance company just happens to fall squarely in the “kill it quickly” column. Sure, I felt a little bad watching my colleague’s face sink and then begin to backpedal once he realized the many faults of his suggestion, but hey, it needed to be done.
Had I even feigned interest in his idea, or given him the classic “great thought, let me research it” response, I have no doubt he would have immediately called his friend and placed our company in a compromising position. Instead, while I may have temporarily wounded his ego, our company’s integrity remained intact, and I imagine my colleague will think twice before he quickly agrees to a friend’s innocent request in the future.
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 [email protected].