Bennett and Philp have worked with a large number of great in-house counsel in their 40 years of service. Recently however, we have discovered a deeper level of respect for the challenges of their job and how much easier they make ours. This came about as our firm recently completed a three-month retainer to act as the (pseudo) in-house counsel for a large national company with subsidiaries across Australia. Directors Andrew Lambros and Lachlan Thorburn headed up this project.
The previous in-house counsel had moved and there was a long gap before the new in-house counsel could start.
Our firm has worked for this client for over 15 years, so there was a deep understanding of the business already. However, it was quickly discovered the sheer volume of issues headed off at this in-house level, before ever seeing external lawyers. They were able to handle these queries, but it required the use of multiple lawyers from different practice groups in our firm who then liaised with the business managers in the group.
This required a different approach for both Andrew and Lachlan and the business managers of our client, who were used to having the in-house counsel deal with the external lawyers and being able to get the more informal level of legal support if external lawyers were not required.
Andrew says both the business managers and our firm realised just how much the in-house counsel contributed through their efforts. While it was something they always knew, acting as the in-house counsel allowed us to personally experience and appreciate this at a much deeper level.
“Obviously, I had the benefit of having a firm of lawyers to call on to deal with a wide range of legal queries that came in. Having to deal with those queries as an in-house counsel alone, or in a small team, would be a different challenge entirely”.
Both Andrew and Lachlan thoroughly enjoyed the deeper level of insight into the business of the client and the challenges of the in-house counsel that our firm obtained during this project. This experience reinforced the importance of teamwork, adaptability, and working with our client by seeking feedback on how to deliver effective legal services that the business managers would see as an actual benefit.
The firm now gets to debrief with the new in-house counsel and the business managers and discuss ways to improve the legal processes of the business with this new insight. We also get to learn how to improve the delivery of our legal services to the client as well.
The firm definitely has a new appreciation for the crucial roles that in-house counsel offer to both the business and the external law firms they deal with and the value they provide in doing so.
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