Surfing the tsunami: 5 tips for in-house counsel

As an in-house lawyer, you are totally immersed with your client – you get to know your client’s business (and its people) really well. But one of the challenges is that the work just keeps on coming! The fact that you are on staff, on-site and on call, means that the sheer volume of work that comes your way on a daily basis, often without any filter, can be a bit overwhelming at times.

So how do you stay on top of the never-ending flow, without being swept away by what can sometimes feel like a flood (or perhaps a tsunami)? Here are a few ideas…

1.     Accept the work. The first one may sound counter-intuitive but here’s the thing – pulling down the shutters, appearing unapproachable or too busy is a killer in terms of establishing great working relationships. Being open and available will build rapport and trust and if you can do that, then your colleagues will totally understand when sometimes you need to ask them to wait a while for your advice.

So accept the work, ask a few questions to get more information and clarify what your colleague needs, what information you might need from them before you can start, and establish what their timeframes/deadlines/expectations are (see tip number 2 below). By all means discuss what your workload looks like at the moment, be realistic about when you can get back to them with the finished product, but a blanket “I’m sorry I can’t even look at your email this week” is not exactly relationship building and to be honest it sounds a bit “computer says no”…

2.     Triage. Those nurses in the emergency department, the ones you see when you first turn up with your sick / broken child, are there for a very good reason. They triage the cases and prioritise who needs to see the doctors first and what constitutes a real emergency (if you have spent any time in the waiting room of an emergency department, you will have seen that only a small percentage of the walk-ups are real emergencies, and the same usually applies to in-house practice). Use the same principles to prioritise your work, which is where tip number 1 comes in again: without opening that email/speaking to the client, you won’t have any idea what’s actually in your inbox, other than knowing that there is a (potentially) huge bunch of stuff to get through.

Someone once told me that it is better to “set the hares running” with pieces of work as they come in. This can easily be done after applying a few minutes of triage to new emails and calls for assistance. You may be able to re-allocate work to someone else – don’t be a roadblock to that happening, be a conduit! Sometimes the query isn’t really a legal one at all and you can refer it on to the correct people (e.g. your risk, compliance or finance colleagues) or simply refer the person to a written policy or previous piece of advice (see tip number 5). Or perhaps you need more information from the person who is asking for your help, or you need the person to go away and do something else first – better to let them know that straight away, rather than sit on the email for a couple of weeks and then tell them what you need. Once all the “hares” are off and racing in relation to one matter, you can get on with something else in the meantime.

3.     Speak to people by phone or in person wherever possible. Yes, this builds the personal connection, but from a time management perspective it’s also so much more efficient. Emails can take forever to “perfect”, lawyers love to write and re-write, which might be OK for a piece of advice that needs to be done in this way, or if you feel you need to confirm a set of facts or figures for future reference, but so often a request for further information or a quick chat about what the issues are, will save you a great deal of time and mean that you will have a better understanding of what needs to be done.

4.     Slot the small stuff in around the big stuff. Sure, there will be those big contracts/high profile projects that take a huge chunk out of your day, but there are also those times when you can attend to the “rats and mice”. This is where I think it’s best to loosen up that rigid FIFO mentality. I’m not saying choose all the small, less difficult matters over the big and complex ones that you received first, but I find it works well to mix it up a bit. When you’ve done what you can on the first draft of that mammoth contract, and your mind needs to focus on something completely different, take a look at the to-do list and see if there are a few things on there that you could do easily and relatively quickly. Same thing if you find yourself with 30 minutes at the end of the day and can’t face starting that big piece of work – there will always be an email or two that you can easily deal with and that’s one less thing for tomorrow’s list. If you keep the small things flowing through, they won’t build up and choke the system.

5.     Collect and file like a librarian. Cataloguing (in whatever way works for you) is very under-rated but a real time saver. If you can lay your hands on exactly the right summary of the law (e.g. that one that was written by the law firm you use, or issued by the regulator or industry body), then this will earn you extra points for fast turnaround and a helpful approach. Likewise if you can quickly re-purpose that piece of advice you gave on a key contract, which you just knew would come up again and again, then this will save you time and win you friends in the commercial department.

Of course there will be times when you need to re-assess whether it’s desirable, or even possible, to keep on top of a tsunami without any extra resources (more to come on this topic), but I’ve found that doing these 5 things can help a lot in the interim. Happy surfing!