In-House Counsel

Don’t Be The Joke Of Your Staff Meetings

Counsel your clients on relevant legal matters -- not all legal matters which, if the stars align, may be relevant to them.

By  
on

No matter where you work, staff meetings are a way of life.

Those awful weekly exercises where everyone is forced to sit around a conference table and give updates on their responsibilities to ensure everyone is on the same page.

These usually happen early on Mondays, before everyone has had enough coffee, and by and large they can be a painful exercise.

Which is why, if you are anything like me, you look for any source of refuge in the meetings to help alleviate the doldrums of reality. My source of respite happens to come in the form of a group text with several of my colleagues from other departments where we generally commiserate on the presenter who happens to be droning on a touch longer than they should.

Recently I took a scroll through some of the group’s of text and realized one of our older attorneys was a frequent flier as a subject of the group’s shared angst. Although he is a very talented and capable attorney, his updates are always guaranteed to go on too long, contain topics that matter little to anyone out of his niche area of employment law, and worst of all, matter even less to the members of our C-suite who participate in our meetings.

During our most recent staff meeting he took close to 20 minutes to detail a case pending before a federal circuit court which could possibly have an impact on our organization.

I am an attorney. I am paid to worry about risks to our hospital for a living. But if all I recall after hearing about the procedural history of the case is that in Jones v. Blah-Blah, if the planets align during the next time a full moon is on a Tuesday, our hospital might be at risk, can you imagine what our CEO took away from the update?

Sponsored

Our job as attorneys, whether we be in-house or Biglaw or small law, is to serve our clients and to counsel them on relevant legal matters, not all legal matters which, if the stars align, may be relevant to them.

We owe a duty to our clients to filter the information for them and present them only with what is necessary so that they may make an informed decision on the topic de jour. By spending more time than is necessary updating our clients on matters of little import or relevance to them, we run the risk of diluting our value and may call the necessity of our future counsel into question.

Admittedly, I rest a bit easier in the evening knowing my elder colleague in charge of employment law for our organization pays as much attention to the developments in his field as he does. I have no doubt should the stars ever align and one of his doomsday scenarios ever comes to fruition, our organization will be ready.

But is this something our client or CEO needs to be bothered with? After all, from their perspective they will just assume they are ready since they have an employment attorney on staff to begin with.

Which is why it is of paramount importance you update your client on only what is relevant to them to make an informed decision. Give them meaningful information on which to act and you can prove your value.

Sponsored

If not, you just may run the risk of becoming the topic of your colleagues’ group text.

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.

Topics

, ,