In at least a half dozen ways, those lawyers who are a company’s only in-house counsel avoid many of the management challenges of larger departments.
1. Vestigial need for knowledge management processes,
2. Non-existent delegation and work assignment issues (See my post of Aug. 26, 2005 about delegation to paralegals.)
3. No management, evaluation, succession planning, and development of other lawyers,
4. Rudimentary technology,
5. Unformalized client satisfaction surveys, and
6. No diversity demands.
A solo in-houser has to be concerned mostly with time management, the wide open range of legal issues pelting him or her, not even knowing what he or she doesn’t know, and – crucially — effective use of outside counsel.