An article on the website of robin rolfe resources explains the many benefits to in-house counsel of networking. Aside from the usual, the article pointed out networking’s benefits when clients push their lawyers to sign off on a course of action because it is “standard for the industry.”
If you know and speak to lawyers at other companies, you can confirm or refute a claim that “everyone’s doing it.” (See my post of Oct.18, 2005 on networking to learn practices.) Here is also another example of collective law department efforts (See my post of Oct. 14, 2005 on cooperation between law departments on management activities.)