Articles Posted in Talent

If you graduate law school at 25, let’s say, and work five years in a law firm, then join a legal department, you might become a general counsel at 40. Consider a real person who easily bested that pace. Thomas Sabatino joined his first legal department (Baxter) when he was 27 years old. He became the general counsel for American Medical International in 1993 at age 34. A few years later he took over the position as the top legal officer for Baxter International but left there in 2004 to join Schering-Plough. After leaving Schering Plough when it was purchased by Merck he was recently named the new general of United Airlines.

With five-to-seven years per GC stint, if you are a standout lawyer with fortunate breaks along the way, you can become, like Sabatino at the tender age of 51, a four-time general counsel. But you would not be alone in that distinction.

As impressive as Sabatino’s career has been, at least five other four-timers sparkle on these pages (See my post of June 19, 2006: Mary Ann Hynes; Oct. 2, 2006 #2: Stasia Kelly; June 20, 2007 #4: Marschall Smith; Nov. 16, 2008 #3: Guy Rounsaville, Jr.; and March 29, 2010 #1: Tracy Rich.).

Those who report to a general counsel in large law departments differ from each other on such demographic characteristics as age, gender, race, religion, department tenure, education, and work background. “A team’s demographic heterogeneity, assessed using a variety of indexes, has been found to be negatively related to level of team rapport and informal communication,” according to research cited in the Acad. Mgt. Rev., Feb. 2005 at 72 (citations omitted). Many people tout the benefits of having employees of different backgrounds on teams, such as the direct reports to a general counsel. Yet others claim those differences gum up the works (See my post of June 23, 2009: mixed findings on whether diverse work groups function more effectively.).

More specifically, diversity on a team “impedes task-related processes and reduces information exchange,” not to mention “invoking defensive behaviors, distrust, conflict and hostility.” Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

Let’s consider this controversial issue still open. Meanwhile, during the two years since my last collection of posts on diversity (See my post of June 17, 2008: diversity with 29 references.). I have written 13 more (See my post of March 6, 2009: diversity easier in a global law department; Aug. 6, 2008: McDonalds’ Santona and her emphasis on diversity; Sept. 21, 2008 #2: DuPont teaming with Wal-Mart on diversity; Dec. 5, 2008: evaluations of firms on diversity performance; Dec. 14, 2008: Pfizer and diversity initiative; Dec. 14, 2008: generational diversity; April 6, 2009: varied demographics among 20 most influential GCs; April 16, 2009: a tool to understand and encourage diversity in sexual orientation at law firms; May 20, 2009: department with a plethora of diversity; June 24, 2009: some history about efforts by legal departments to encourage use of diverse lawyers in firms; July 13, 2009: Williams Co. ranks firms on diversity and tells them their ranking; Aug. 20, 2009: statements by general counsel in support for good causes; Dec. 7, 2009: Coca-Cola and its best-in-class evaluation of “partner” firms; and Dec. 7, 2009: sizeable internship program at Bristol-Myers Squibb.).

General counsel usually say things like “My lawyers tell me what they think. We have candid and open conversations in private and during staff meetings.” Maybe. I have always felt that subordinates do not point out that the top lawyer has no clothes, or that the firm favored by the GC stinks, or that the pet management belief of the CLO is the laughingstock of the department. But I attributed that reluctance to buck authority to a fear of reprisal. The messenger who fears being shot stays mum (See my post of Feb. 1, 2006: how to reduce the chilling effect of a dominant personality or position; Dec. 8, 2006: a GC’s chilling effect; and Jan. 9, 2009: ideas are suppressed around a general counsel.).

The Harvard Business Review, June 2010 at 26, debunks my myth about employee silence. Surprisingly, “the most common reason for withholding input is a sense of futility rather than a fear of retribution.” If an Associate General Counsel concludes that time tracking is set in stone, why challenge it? If the head of IP will never stop hiring firms based on law-school ties, why butt your head against a wall? Giving up, it seems, is more common than cowering (See my post of Aug. 28, 2005: one reason for using a consultant is to let people safely voice their ideas; April 17, 2007: silence at Town Halls; and Jan. 4, 2009: electronic voting software helps air difficult issues.).

talent mgt., May 2010 at 44, describes how GlaxoSmithKline tested a novel approach to assessing job candidates. They piloted a method that used a Web-based tool to analyze references before the decisive interviews of new hires, including lawyers.

Once the top three to five candidates were identified they were asked “to electronically select and provide information on five professional references.” GSK relied on the software to notify those references, tell them the candidate had waived liability (since some references do not want to risk being sued for what they disclose), and remind them that their responses would be aggregated with those of other references to preserve anonymity and confidentiality.

Most of the references completed an online survey that asked approximately 20 behaviorally based questions and a few questions on the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, all of which were compiled by GSK’s software. That information greatly benefited the company personnel who eventually interviewed the candidates (See my post of May 22, 2009: hiring interviews for lawyers with 6 references.). General counsel might consider a similar method for senior-level hires.

“No matter how we might deny it, relationship issues are the most difficult problems we face in business.” The quote comes from Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired (Penguin 2009) at 49.

I tend to think of the challenges of managing a group of in-house lawyers and staff as intellectual problems: how to deliver legal advice well, how to design the department and its operations, how to spend budgets wisely. Jacobs reminds me and all of us that people are number one, by far, and that their issues can be most intractable and frustrating.

The head patent lawyer dislikes the commercial lawyer for the widget group. The junior corporate lawyer has obvious ambitions and disrespects the lawyer she reports to. The HR lawyer jokes around all the time, to the extreme irritation of the all-business paralegal. On an on, the frictions and fractiousness of humans in close and constant contact grey the hairs of managers.

A recent book about neuroscience and management makes the point that the common practice in business is to focus on managing the behavior of workers. Not good. To focus on the values and understanding of workers, says the author, is much more efficacious. Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired (Penguin 2009) at 17, gives an example: “If you want to improve customer service, you’re better off stressing its importance and linking it to an employee’s values than prescribing a set of behaviors that will probably be executed with indifference or contempt.”

Process maps and efficiency efforts focus on prescribing behavior; indeed, they channel, monitor, assess, and define it. They pay no heed to someone’s underlying awareness of objectives or the importance of those objectives. In general, I side with those who explain a goal and its value and let people get on with accomplishing the goal the best way they can.

When we consider data on those lawyers promoted to head the legal team – chief legal officer, head of legal, general counsel, call it what you will – a facile distinction divides them into internal promotions and external hires. But a more nuanced understanding recognizes internal promotions of lawyers who have been with the company several years as different from so-called internal promotions where the lawyer came in only a year or so before expressly to be promoted, assuming all goes well.

Consider the second category as “auditions,” those who joined the company two years or less before being promoted. The term “internal promotion” ought to take into account the misimpression created if a significant number of those lawyers were actually auditions, not veterans (See my post of May 18, 2010: promotions to general counsel with 9 references.).

“Four out of five times, boards choose insider candidates when selecting a CEO. Insiders tend to perform better and last longer.” The quote comes from strategy + bus., Summer 2010 at 80. Booz & Company analyzed successions of CEOs at the world’s 2,500 largest publicly traded companies. They then studied relative shareholder returns of newly-appointed CEOs over the next ten years and how long the CEOs kept their position. Both indicators of success favor inside promotions.

We lack comparable data for general counsel, but the essential finding may hold true for them. A general counsel promoted from the internal ranks may fill the role more successfully – however that is defined – than a general counsel recruited from outside the company. Other posts have commented on the decision to fill a vacancy at the top from within the company or without (See my post of Jan. 4, 2006: if the law department needs shaking up, hire a general counsel from outside; Feb. 19, 2006: higher pay for the external than the internal GC hire; Aug. 1, 2006: second-order consequences if GCs aren’t promoted from within; April 16, 2007: in the wake of an internal promotion; May 27, 2007: to tell or not to tell internal candidates about their prospects for promotion to the GC opening; June 20, 2007: turnover of GCs when new CEO arrives; May 15, 2009: some ideas about GCs based on a study; Sept. 30, 2009: likelihood of more managerial changes in early years, but does it favor insiders or outsiders; and Jan. 7, 2010: Booz’s earlier research on best performing CEOs come from inside.).

Based on the responses of 348 in-house counsel (one-third of which are general counsel and 51 percent come from public companies), InsideCounsel, March 2010 at 47, discloses nine advantages of working as in-house counsel, plus rankings.

“Work-life balance” led with 32.4 percent of the respondents choosing it, followed by “Exposure to the business side” at 24.5 percent. Coming in third was “Variety of legal work” (17.4%) and fourth, “Working for one client” (12.5%)

First, note that the drop-off to fifth place and below was large – “Job security” (4.6%), “Management opportunities” (3.7%), “Pay and benefits” (1.8%), “Career advancement opportunities” (1.6%), and “My colleagues” (1.5%).

When employers across different companies use comparable surveys of employee engagement, you would think that some drivers of engagement would surface as more common and compelling. Not true. According to talent mgt., March 2010 at 42, “the drivers of employee engagement across different organizations are consistently more different than they are similar – even among businesses that are in the same industry.”

Hence, if a group of law departments had their lawyers take the same instrument to assesses engagement, a large number of separate survey items would probably rank as a top five driver of employee engagement for at least one of the departments. All kinds of things affect the job commitment of in-house lawyers.

In retrospect, I have been highly engaged with blog posts on employee engagement (See my post of April 3, 2005: the engagement index of Stanton Marris; June 28, 2005: Gallup polls on disengagement; Nov. 19, 2005: satisfaction compared to “engagement”; Oct. 12, 2006: engagement measures; Nov. 25, 2006: pay, pride and pals are the essentials of enthusiastic employees; April 16, 2007: disengagement following another lawyer’s promotion; June 11, 2007: employee engagement; July 6, 2007: engagement keeps employees longer; Jan. 10, 2008: employee engagement and values; Jan. 10, 2008: “business”; May 29, 2008: employee engagement results from “business, boss, buddies and briefs”; June 6, 2008: ten Cs of employee engagement and corporate counsel correlates; July 13, 2008: “buddies”; July 13, 2008: “the energy, effort, and initiative employees bring to their jobs”; Aug. 26, 2009: more engaged, better performance; Jan. 7, 2010: if morale is low, consider an engagement survey; Feb. 23, 2010: five principles to increase employee engagement, and how well they apply to in-house attorneys; and Feb. 25, 2010: pulse surveys.).