“Made to Do More” and “remain calm and composed”- Evolving role of Corporate Counsel

Doing more perfectly captures the developing role of corporate counsel in today’s highly competitive and complex corporate environment. Legal knowledge may be only a baseline, but the value-adds comes as much or more from business skills such as driving strategic initiatives, managing people and projects, optimising systems, and fostering communication and consensus across the organisation. Success as corporate counsel now demands your leadership skills more than your technical legal expertise. Corporate counsel must be embedded at the center of strategy especially in a highly regulated industry, where legal counsel’s decisions carry significant regulatory, financial and reputational consequences.

Role of corporate counsel depends on several factors, such as the size of organisation, size and scope of the legal team, the industry where it operates, geographical footprints of the business and expectations and approaches of senior management. Despite these variables, core duties of In-House Legal remain consistent: deliver the highest possible level of legal services to the management, enabling the organisation to operate effectively, responsibly and sustainably.

Corporate counsel is expected to provide not only legal advice but also business and corporate advice with sense of business strategies. Work of corporate counsel is generally determined by the special needs of its management, which may vary from time to time. Considering the growing complexity of modern corporations, most important role is often that of a manager of a major set of risks faced by the Organisation. In-House Legal must be more than just a legal technician, who tries to guess which business strategies will pass muster with the courts, should bring more than just good lawyering to the job. Corporate counsel must add value to the business. In-House Legal’s dual role of “legal advocate” as well as “corporate adviser” will enable the management to feel comfortable in involving corporate counsel in all major business decisions.

Another critical question faced by corporate counsel, is who your client is, whether the organisation or its stakeholders including officers, directors and shareholders. Ideally you are expected to represent the organisation and not the stakeholders by overlooking the larger interest of the organisation. This may create serious conflict of interest while dealing with legal issues. Your privity and obligations shall be to the organisation and not to its stakeholders and it is important to understand the existence of any conflict of interests and acting diligently without prejudicing or compromising the better interests of the organisation.

Finally, another key quality, a corporate counsel should mandatorily possess, is remaining calm and composed, even when dealing with challenging situations. Being the leader of corporate legal, ethical and governance functions, corporate counsel shall be consistently mellow and unflappable which can be very powerful in setting the right tone for the business.