Corporate Lawyer’s Top 10 List of Successful Outside Counsel Habits: #2 Putting Client’s Interests First and Getting Rudy onto the Field

Corporate Lawyer’s Top 10 List of Successful Outside Counsel Habits: #2 Putting the client’s interests first and getting Rudy onto the Notre Dame football field.

2.? You act in our best interests, ahead of your own.

If you want to keep clients for longer, the best outside counsel work to shorten the current legal engagement.? We owe many duties to our clients as lawyers – of course one of them being to act in their best interests.? It has surprised me at times, however, that I will have a healthy dose of skepticism about whether the advice provided was in our best interests.? It is a trap that you should strive to avoid.

Why might the advice not be in our best interests?? We are all human and have many competing interests.? There can be financial interests, personal interests, outside influence, firm interests, and many more “conflicts” that weigh on any piece of legal advice.? If you had 2-3 takeaways from this running list, one of them would be to create a brand around your lawyering that shows you will do whatever it takes to put the client’s interests first.

As in-house counsel, we see more than you think.? As an example, a law firm might suggest a course of action that extends the matter and thus their financial benefit.? It happens way more than it should.? We want you to be well rewarded, we want you to make a profit, but be very wary of advice that aligns to the law firm’s financial benefit.? Acknowledge it.? Address it.? And tell the client why it is still the best way forward with sound rationale and how you will help address the financial impact as best you can with the client.? If it is not the best way forward, do not go anywhere near it.? You could lose a client for life.

This is one of many examples of how I see pressures weighing on advice.? That is why one of the critical roles of in-house counsel is to act as a check on that advice to ensure the advice given is truly in our best interests.? The less your advice must be checked at the door, the better reputation you will get and longer you will work with that client.? Whenever I consider which outside counsel to hire, the first and last question is who is the outside counsel that will achieve the best result given the business priority of legal engagement?? An outside counsel who has a brand and reputation of consistently putting us before them will have pole position in answering that question to get them the work.

I have been showing my son some of my favorite movies lately.? The movie Rudy is one of them.? This is the story of the walk on Notre Dame football player who had to overcome poor grades and little athleticism to make the football team.? I love the message to my son in this movie that hard work can overcome so much challenge in any person’s life.? In one scene, a Notre Dame player (played by Vince Vaughn) ignores a coach’s play call to get Rudy (played by Sean Astin) on the field at the end of the season.?

There are many inspirational moments in this movie, but this one is at the top for me.? Why?? Because even after all his hard work, his determination, and his resilience, Rudy only got onto the field because someone put Rudy’s interests ahead of his own.? If you can be that person for your client, you will never come off the playing field for them.

-Brennan