If You Are A Gladiator, What Am I?
As an in-house counsel, you are uniquely qualified to help eliminate future problems if you work closely with outside counsel as they defend those lawsuits brought against your organization.
If outside counsel is responsible for going into battle, in-house counsel is responsible for preventing future battles.
Outside counsel can solve immediate problems by resolving litigation, but in-house counsel can eliminate future problems by evaluating the root causes of that litigation and sharing potential ways to avoid the litigation in the future.
As an in-house counsel, you are uniquely qualified to help eliminate future problems if you work closely with outside counsel as they defend those lawsuits brought against your organization. There is so much you can learn about the problems in your organization if you just take the time to look. You can help answer discovery, attend depositions, review pleadings/motions, and attend trial as the organization’s representative. By participating in the process in this way, you will have the chance to do something your outside counsel doesn’t do. You can identify causes to root problems and help your organization find ways to help prevent similar future problems.
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How do you do that? You can start by doing these things.
Ask Questions
While working with outside counsel, help outside counsel by gathering the facts necessary to defend the case. Talk to people inside and outside your organization. Find out what happen, when it happened, and why it happened.
Look At Your Policies And Your Procedures
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As you are gathering facts, also take the time to review your policies and your procedures. Think about whether there are any policies and procedures at issue given the facts of your case. If there are policies and procedures at issue, were they known by the parties involved? Were they clear? Were they followed? If you don’t have policies and procedures, ask yourself whether your organization needs to create some moving forward.
Consider The Employees Involved
Did the employees do the jobs they were hired to do? If the employees did not do their jobs, ask the question why.
Also ask whether the employees at issue have the capacity to do their jobs. If they do not currently, ask if they have the potential to grow with the right mentoring and training or is the problem that they were not suited for the job at all.
Consider Your Management
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What about the manager’s role in the problem? Is there something your manager could have done differently that would have resulted in a different outcome? Are your managers prepared to do their jobs? Could they benefit from training?
Consider Training
Think about whether training would help prevent the problem in the future. Is the problem that the organization’s employees don’t know or understand internal policies and procedures, or is it that they don’t know or understand local, state, or federal law? Could your managers benefit from management training?
Examine Communication And Culture
Make sure you look at how employees within your organization communicate from the top levels of the leadership to the employees at the ground level and across divisions. Some problems can be addressed simply by improving communication.
Don’t overlook the message itself. If there is adequate communication, think about whether the organization is communicating the right message. What is communicated from the top can significantly contribute to the corporate culture, which in turn can impact how people behave.
Gather Resources
See if you can find resources that might help the organization address the problems that caused the litigation. If you cannot find anything that exists, think about whether there is something you can create and share with your leadership that would help prevent the problem in the future.
When you take the time to analyze what the organization’s employees do or do not do with respect to the problem, you can help your organization develop a plan to ensure that things are done differently to prevent future problems.
Desmond Tutu said it best: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
When you find root causes to problems and you take steps to help your organization eliminate them going forward, you are doing your organization a significant service. You are potentially preventing future problems. When you prevent future problems, you give your leadership the chance to focus on the organization’s primary missions, goals, and objectives rather than having to focus on lawsuits.
Lisa Lang is an in-house lawyer and thought leader who is passionate about all things in-house. She has recently launched a website and blog Why This, Not That™ to serve as a resource for in-house lawyers. You can e-mail her at lisa@lawyerlisalang.com, connect with her on LinkedIn, or follow her on Twitter.
