It’s the nature of every large corporation: Leadership plans a massive reorganization or is considering buying another company or selling a business division. Or it’s time to go public.
Or perhaps a government agency announces an investigation that targets the company or industry, or your team is tasked with investigating a new rule and implementing changes to comply.
“These kinds of projects can be intimidating when they show up on your desk,” Amy Gulinson, associate general counsel for Aon, said Tuesday on a best-practices webinar sponsored by Axiom, a provider of on-demand legal talent. “They can also be very clarifying.”
These large work initiatives typically follow a project management paradigm in which the time, scope and resources are the parameters for the work. Typically, the legal department won’t be able to control the timing or alter the deadline for a project, she noted.
Such projects represent “a real surge in a body of work that you need to execute in a certain period of time, often exceeding the capacity” of the legal team, said Catherine Kemnitz, Axiom’s chief strategy and development officer.
This is also where a general counsel or legal operations leader will determine whether the team will need additional budget for external help, whether that’s an outside law firm, a consultancy or an alternative legal services provider.
“For the projects you have line of sight to and you do have time to be able to engage cross-functionally and make the case for budget, those are, of course, the ideal projects, the way we dream about being able to organize these things,” Gulinson said.
At the outset, it’s important for the team to define what a successful outcome would look like for the organization and its priorities for the large task ahead. “What do we value most in this process to go from where we are to where we need to be?” Kemnitz said. “If everyone is aligned, there are a few paths to get there.”
For example, the goal may be to spend less money to accomplish part of the work in a different fashion, or to move faster if speed is a higher priority than conserving budget resources. Project management “is not naturally found in a lot of legal teams,” she said, with large projects requiring lawyers to employ different skills than usual.
Another critical task: Organizing a team structure to make clear who owns what areas of the work process, said Gulinson, who oversees the legal teams supporting Aon’s sourcing, procurement and real estate.
These large projects — say, a potential merger or an internal restructuring — tend to be “very operational” in the sense that the work and decisions will affect multiple areas of the business and need “to be carried through the plumbing of the organization,” Kemnitz said.
For example, the implications of the European Union’s 2018 General Data Protection Regulation affected far more than the legal departments of multinational companies to comply with the law, she said.
When dealing with external professional help, such as a consultant or specialist attorney, “treating them as though they are one of your team and really folding them into the fray, being overly inclusive to create that level of collaboration and dedication” will benefit the project tremendously, Gulinson said.
It’s also critical to manage to a project’s budget. “I do not operate on any sort of time or materials basis,” she said, instead pressing for fixed fees and outcome-based pricing. “I have a really good sense of what that’s going to cost,” she said, noting the importance of keeping a close eye on project spending. “Oftentimes, I have to fight for those dollars. Legal’s the last place anybody likes to give more dollars,” Gulinson said.
And when it comes to a project’s budget, try to ensure the cost doesn’t sit entirely with the legal department, said Heather Jacobson, vice president of operations for Axiom Advice & Counsel, the company’s law firm. “If the rest of the organization expects that the legal portion of a large project is just about the legal work, the cost is going to look disproportionate,” she said.
For many GCs, their department is well-known as a cost center “so there is a tendency to not want to bring that up and address it,” Gulinson said. “Try to find those dollars in other places in the organization yourself,” she advised. “Be your own advocate because everybody else is doing it. We’re not just scriveners. We’re advisers, and we’re thought leaders.”
Aside from the costs and pitfalls of failure, large internal projects are typically rewarding, the panel noted. Company leaders are involved or closely monitoring the work, they carry a sense of urgency and importance, and they can often help to benefit one’s career.
“Know that there is not one project that goes according to plan, and not one project, in the moment, feels like it went perfectly well,” Kemnitz said. “Just ride the wave.”
