In-House Counsel

An In-House Advice Column For Better Interpersonal Office Relationships

If people at your company lack social skills, this is the advice column for you.

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Do you ever find yourself flipping through magazines in all your voluminous free time? Yeah, me neither. And while I carefully avoid in-flight magazines (obviously covered in germs that can survive high altitudes and sub-optimal oxygen conditions) and anything left out at the doctor’s office (half the people sitting in the office with you are wearing masks, right?), I have no such qualms flipping through periodicals left for my reading pleasure at banks, salons, and the dentist’s office (though I’m starting to rethink that last one). What can I say? I am a germaphobic paradox wrapped in a devil-may-care-I’m-bored enigma.

In addition to cheating my way through all the quizzes the fine people at Cosmo have to offer (I am in optimal physical and emotional health and my celebrity life partner is Idris Elba), I like to pause on those modern Miss Manner rip-offs. You know the ones, where someone poses an idiot question and then an ever-patient columnist attempts to answer it without breaking into obscenity-filled prose?

Dear Janet: I work in a small office where someone routinely leaves delicious-smelling, carefully labeled leftovers in the fridge. It’s okay for me to take a bite out of them and put them back where I found them, right? Hungrily yours, Hal.

Janet: Dear Hungry Hal, even though those leftovers sound pretty tasty, they no doubt belong to one of your co-workers who would be more than happy to cut you over a purloined portion of pasta. Best to leave them be or make your own. And guess what, Hal? You’re in luck. On page 18, you can find 10 handy recipes for fall that you can make in 10 minutes or less.

Now, how cool would it be if you could post these columns, hand-tailored to your business constituents, to you company’s intranet? I’m seriously thinking of pitching this to the GC to further deepen our interpersonal relationships with our business partners and foster semi-open communication. And Science. When in doubt, bring Science into it.

Here’s a few thoughts for my intro column.

Dear Kay: An attorney caught me berating a paralegal in the hall the other day and she proceeded to go all H.A.M. on me. I tried to explain that the paralegal refused to draft an SOW for me after the work had already been completely done and now Procurement won’t give me a PO to pay the vendor. What’s her problem? Sincerely, Wesley.

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Kay: Dearest Wesley, people who pick on paralegals deserve to contract rashes on their most sensitive areas. Next time before you violate company policy and try to strong arm someone into covering it for you after the fact, I want you to remember that paralegals are like national parks. They are to be treasured and cultivated. Any attempt to despoil them or lay waste to these rare resources will result in immediate H.A.M. responses from the attorneys who love them and appreciate all they do for the department. Also, enjoy your box seats in hell, weasel.

*****

Dear Kay: It’s the day before the end of the quarter and I need to make sure that this sales contract gets approved by Legal. This is only my fourth year of going through this process, but the attorney says I always wait to the last minute and there’s nothing she can do. But I really need this done and I swear I will never do this again. Any thoughts on how to get my contract to the top of her pile? Thanks, Jen!!!

Kay: Jen, five words: bottle of full bodied red. Jen, try and put yourself in your attorney’s shoes. There is one of her and 40 or 50 of you. (Honestly, you’re like Gremlins. Did somebody feed the sales team after midnight again? I swear you’re multiplying at a rate faster than rabbits reproduce. That can’t be in keeping with the natural order of things). Here’s a few red hot practice tips: First, keep it on our paper. Review will go faster when we don’t have to negotiate out liquidated damage clauses that include the surrender of your first born. Second, give your attorney a heads-up when you start negotiating the deal along with a short summary of the high-level specs and what you think the sticking points will be. (C’mon, Jen. You’ve been doing this for four years. You know exactly where the problems will be.) Third, when your attorney reaches out with questions about your “urgent” email, if you wait 48 hours before responding in monosyllables, your attorney will think your email wasn’t that urgent. And here’s the lightning round, bonus tip, Jen. Don’t use the angry red exclamation point function on Outlook. That’s amateur hour. And if that fails, a full bodied red, Jen.

*****

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Dear Kay: I am really frustrated. I emailed our attorney, our PR department, our customer care folks, the entire Sales team, our CEO, CFO, CPO, CIO, CP30, and half the maintenance team about a customer complaint that claimed our product causes mild intestinal distress. She immediately picked up the phone and told me to recall the email. What gives? Yours truly, Wayne.

Kay: Dear, Wayne. I believe the email you haphazardly forwarded to half the company had the subject line: “Your Product Gave Me the Shits.” In addition to generating an unfortunate string of memes, knee-jerk responses about culpability, and an early morning panic attack for our CEO, you are a bad e-Discovery cautionary tale. We’ve been over this. Dance like no one is watching, write emails like you’ll be on the stand one day explaining them. The better thing to do when something like this happens is to pick up the phone and call Legal. We will help limit the damage, formulate a response, and cut down on the amount of excrement-themed memes floating around. Pun intended.

*****

Obviously, I plan to hang on to my day job and this ATL gig for a bit until this advice column takes off. But you can see its practical applications, right? And if nothing else, we’ll do it for Science.

Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at KayThraceATL@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.

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