Greg Morical: Client development is a must for in-house counsel

When a lawyer thinks about going in-house, two things likely come to mind: joy about no longer needing to bill time and relief around no longer needing to develop client relationships.

While the first is typically true, my 27 years of in-house practice have taught me that having less than strong client relationships risks both how effective you will be as an in-house lawyer and how much you will enjoy the role.

Developing strong client relationships is important whether you are an in-house lawyer for a small private company or part of an army of lawyers inside a Fortune 50 global powerhouse.

In-house lawyers typically get assigned particular clients. Depending on the company, that could be one or more business units, functions, territories, or projects. Upon receiving an assignment, someone will send out an email to the relevant group(s) announcing your arrival and assignment to your new clients. Now your client development work begins.

I would encourage you to quickly identify and understand your clients. Meet with them, ideally in person. Get to know them, their part of the business, to whom they report, their key goals/objectives and challenges/frustrations.

Find out if they have any “lawyer baggage”—their past experience with lawyers that will likely color how they view/engage/work with you.

Understand what is currently on their plate, where they want or need your help—which can be two different things. You should primarily be in listening mode. You will have time to impress them with your war stories later.

Once this effort is complete, you will have a good, initial sense of who you are dealing with, what they want and what they need. You can then develop a game plan as to how to engage with each of them. It is likely you will land on several different approaches.

Before exploring ideas around how to stay engaged with your clients, I thought I would share what goes poorly when your relationship with a client is less than effective.

They perceive you as an obstacle, they “forget” to ask you to review something, they give you a contract to review very late (or after it is signed) with the mindset that you just need to “check the box.” They “chuck it over the fence”—telling you they need you to review/digest/explain/approve the document because “it’s a contract” or “it’s a legal document.”

Never mind that the document is written in their native language and contains key business terms that are their responsibility to understand/negotiate/approve.

Beyond those very real examples, the greater risk is your client does not involve you when you could have added significant value. Examples include the contract they signed that includes the seriously problematic “most-favored nations” clause and the internal emails or handwritten notes that contain imprudent statements that are subject to and eventually get produced during discovery.

You can avoid these types of problems by developing effective relationships with your clients. It starts with understanding them and meeting them where they are.

Some of your clients will be capable of developing a negotiation strategy, preparing a draft term sheet and providing substantive comments on a draft contract. Some of them will need you to hold their hand each step of the way.

Some of them will procrastinate, with the tendency to generate urgent/last minute requests. Those are the ones you want to proactively connect with to help identify issues before it is too late.

Some of them can communicate effectively via email/chat/text. Some of them communicate best in a live conversation.

When you achieve positive, effective relationships with your clients, your in-house practice is much more valuable for your actual client (the company) and much more enjoyable.

Your business clients engage you early in their matters. You have the opportunity to work with them to shape/improve the strategy/negotiation/document—the work product is always better as a result of that collaboration.

And you can help them avoid the imprudent communications they will regret when they surface in litigation—either through counseling them on what/how to communicate or appropriately using attorney client privilege to protect sensitive communications.

In addition to the benefits of effective client relationships described above, you now have clients that trust and respect you. They are willing to listen to you. And they are now interested in you being more involved in their business strategies/plans, which will allow you to have a greater impact and add more value as a true business partner.

You can leverage your quality relationships to grow their skill set—providing training, tools and systems that will allow them to be more effective in their role and making you more efficient—creating more value for your actual client. It will also make your job more personally and professionally rewarding.

In closing, just because you are in-house and “free” to your internal clients does not mean that they will use you.

Grow your soft skills. Prioritize developing and nurturing your client relationships. Recognize that this is not a one and done effort.

The process of developing client relationships will occur every time you change areas of responsibility and/or get promoted, as well as every time you move to a different company—I’m on my sixth.

Even if you don’t change jobs or roles, it is inevitable that new executives and other business leaders will come into your orbit, and you’ll get to start this process all over again.•

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Greg Morical is senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of Calumet Inc.