HIGH FIVES are BACK!

A?new batch of HIGH FIVES!????

Once we had worked our way through our (rather aspirational) summer reading lists, and each took a proper summer break, we started talking about why we are doing this – what’s the point of Sarah & Jamie’s HIGH FIVES, after all???

• ??Lawyers can be?highly?impactful in organisations?if they are engaged, happy, and confident.???
• Narrow perceptions of the role of lawyers are out-dated!?We?know?that lawyers can do?more, and have?more impact, in enterprise.???
• Good lawyers understand the product, the business, the business objectives, and the competitive landscape. They are useful people to have in the room when working out what happens next.???
• We are frustrated by the traditionally reductive or restricted view of the contribution of legal teams.???
• We asked ourselves: what could we do to improve the perception, role, and potential of lawyers in business????

For a start, we think inhouse lawyers should be prepped and developed for high business impact and influence early in their careers.??We think this means that lawyers should be visible, interested, and confident: giving?constructive and practical advice.?This approach will allow?us?to?step away from traditional perceptions and excel as?business leaders.??

It should be easy for?this profession?to be happy and successful at work!?But it isn’t always, and our own experience was that we didn’t really know where to start.?Now we are more experienced (old),?we have started writing about what we learned.???

Our HIGH FIVEs are all about:??

• the kind of guidance we wish that we’d had earlier in our own careers?
• how to be?an enthusiastic, useful presence?
• how to be confident?in our abilities and our value?
• how?to break down the generic ‘advice’ often given to lawyers like ‘be strategic’, develop presence’ and other bland statements

We want to help you to understand what these statements mean, how to do it, and what impact it can have.???We believe that we can help inhouse lawyers to?do a better job and feel more in control.??

Better and?happier?lawyers mean a better, and?happier,?business.???

We welcome everyone to the conversation, and we would love to hear from you.?We’ll be posting new HIGH FIVES here soon….?