Imagine a scenario where you need to hire an attorney, and your team is confident and organized in its interview process. After the interview, you collectively debrief on common sets of competencies, skills, practice areas and traits. That would be … [more]
CLO & GC Blog
Strategies for a Successful Legal Succession Plan Part II: Stretch Assignment, Special Project and Developmental Opportunities
As we noted in the previous chapter, cross-training is a useful approach to building a succession plan. Other helpful strategies are stretch assignments, special projects and developmental opportunities. Stretch Assignments and Special Projects Stretch assignments and special project opportunities allow … [more]
Strategies for a Successful Legal Succession Plan Part I: Cross-Training
Succession planning can be exact and precise, or it can be open and loosely interpreted. The format will depend in part on your organization’s culture and resources. Below are suggestions on how to supplement what you may be doing or … [more]
Recruit to Your Official Legal Team Plan
By their very nature, hiring plans are fluid and subject to change. But you can’t alter your plan if you don’t have one to change. The art is being flexible while staying the course. Let’s start from the beginning. The … [more]
Know Your Legal Hiring Plan and Create a Proven Communication Strategy
We often see situations where a legal team becomes insular and/or isolated from the larger management team. This can happen for a number of reasons, and the outcomes are generally not successful. Therefore, securing a buy-in from the senior management … [more]
Establish a Comprehensive, Long-Term Vision for Your Legal Team
Long-term vision may have different definitions for different companies, but here are some statistics to frame the conversation: The interview process in America has grown by 3.3 to 3.7 days since 2009. “Today it stands at 22.9 days on average.” (Source: Glassdoor) Eight months is the … [more]
General Counsel, What Makes an Effective Mentor?
A legal mentor is a seasoned and experienced lawyer who has navigated the intricacies of the law in a variety of settings, in-house as a legal leader, in a law firm as the leader of a practice group, as the … [more]
How GCs Can Build a Legal Department Poised for the Future
The kinds of opportunities and uncertainties facing companies today are as challenging as any in modern history. As you may know, executive teams must always thoroughly analyze – and revisit – their priorities and goals and identify ways to optimize … [more]
How Are Salary Wars and Remote Work Impacting In-House Recruiting?
The world of Big Law is a competitive one, and that competition sometimes results in firms trying to “one-up” each other on associate pay. This summer is another example of that periodic phenomenon. Recently we have seen firm after … [more]
Tackling the Budget-Workload Conundrum as We Move Out of the Covid Crisis
At the end of last year, when Covid was still a prominent factor on the minds of all corporations, many companies decreased the size of their legal department budgets. It was a move that was designed to deal with the … [more]
