If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. - Peter F. Drucker

Thomson Reuter’s Legal Executive Institute recently invited me to speak about what it takes to be a modern legal department. As someone who runs a global legal team, this is a topic near to my heart, and I hold strong opinions that Legal needs to, and can, change to deliver so much more value than it does today.

Think about the tremendous rate of transformation of other corporate functions – marketing, sales, human resources, and so on. These would be almost unrecognizable to a practitioner from 20 or 30 years ago. Yet Legal – from ossified law school curricula, to lockstep Big Law practice, to corporates – stubbornly presses on with little change or growth. Does the recent round of first year salary hikes, led by one, followed by the rest, leave any doubt that Legal for the most part is an industry of followers? 

I believe we are entering a new era in Legal, one in which tradition and complacency will no longer be tenable.

Go beyond “good enough”

As the boundaries between technology, business, and the law continue to blur rapidly, enterprises need their legal teams to broaden and redefine their role. They need them to act as strategic advisers delivering innovation and competitive advantage to the entire enterprise.

Today, the most progressive legal departments act as accelerators and change agents for their companies...

“Good enough” (aka “just keep us out of jail”) is not enough anymore. It limits the legal function to playing a defensive and reactive role, squandering the opportunity to enhance the enterprise and deliver shareholder value. We can help set and implement new business models, policies, and workflows that propel the business forward.

We should be pushing forward into new, innovative roles:

• Accelerating and scaling execution. Lawyers have earned the reputation, honed over decades, of being slow and pedantic. Today, however, the most progressive legal departments act as accelerators and change agents for their companies. They help their businesses move faster by deploying time-saving technology and processes, cutting cycle times of important tasks from weeks to days, days to hours, and hours to seconds. Innovation and automation are not just making the legal department more efficient; they are removing friction and bringing velocity to the business, creating millions of dollars of value in the process. 
• Seeing what nobody else can. As an enterprise grows, functions and leaders tend to become siloed, making it difficult to compete in a fast-changing world. A strong General Counsel sitting at the CEO’s table can move seamlessly up, down, and across an organization, identifying critical interdependencies and “blind spots.” This independent perspective can be a major advantage and source of support for the chief executive.

• Championing the character of the company. When asked to list the most vital competencies needed by future GCs, corporate officers rank overall judgment and integrity higher than legal expertise. They want GCs to protect the values of the company and advocate responsible behavior and corporate governance. This is about more than protecting against liability; it is about shaping and protecting the identity of the company. It also makes good economic sense: In one study, companies that scored highest ethically generated returns that were 30% greater than the Fortune 500.

Make your choice

It is time to define your vision for the future of Legal, whether you are a legal leader or client. Are you content being generally effective within traditional expectations? Or do you want to aim higher, and drive growth, innovation, and opportunity? Now is the time to answer these questions.

To become a modern legal department, there are things we need to unlearn. I am still on that journey with my team, but we have come a long way and are deeply committed to the vision. I also know and see progressive, forward thinking GCs (especially here in the valley) who are implementing these ideas and serving as role models. It’s time that we work together to shape Legal into an innovation center for the company.

*

[As senior vice president, general counsel, chief compliance counsel, and secretary for NetApp, Matthew Fawcett is responsible for all legal affairs worldwide, including corporate governance and securities law compliance, intellectual property matters, contracts, and mergers and acquisitions. He has overseen the development of NetApp Legal into a global high-performance organization with a unique commitment to innovation and transformation.]