Best Practice #5: Effective Implementation In-House
Background: In most law departments, many lawyers interact with outside counsel on a daily basis and have the ability to affect outside counsel’s schedules. For this reason, all the lawyers in law departments need to be aware of the general counsel’s commitment to diversity and flexibility to ensure effective and consistent support for outside counsel seeking work/life balance consistent with client needs.
Best Practice: Connection law departments will take steps to implement their commitment to diversity and flexibility, including:
- Leadership from the top. Connection general counsel will clearly state their expectation that all lawyers in their departments will support outside counsel’s need for work-life balance, consistent with business needs. Such statements are particularly effective at meetings where both in-house and outside counsel are present, e.g., a department’s annual meeting for outside counsel.
- Training and communication in house. In view of their departments’ need to control costs and their commitment to diversity and flexibility:
- Connection general counsel will include, in law department trainings and communication, information explaining why support of flexible schedules and work-life balance for outside counsel is important to control costs, to ensure continuity of outside counsel, and to support diversity. The information should include suggestions for how outside counsel’s schedules can be supported.
- Connection general counsel will communicate to their departments that, absent a concrete deadline or specific business need, it is inappropriate for in-house lawyers to wait to give outside counsel an assignment at the last minute, e.g., at 5 p.m. on Friday.
