The skillset of corporate counsel aids organisations in decision-making and responding to challenges
The skills provided by corporate counsel have made in-house legal experts vital to workplaces with an eye towards the future, according to a study conducted by the Association of Corporate Counsel and legal ops platform Dazychain.
The study focused on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on legal departments, and involved an Alpha Creates survey that was conducted online among 60 legal teams in Australia over May 2020-June 2020. The results were compiled in a report entitled What’s next? The impact of COVID-19 on Australian corporate legal departments.
The research findings indicated that as organisations look to manage the impact of the pandemic, in-house legal teams are offering “more essential assistance than ever,” Dazychain said in a media release.
“Above all, our research demonstrated that lawyers are critical in the workplaces of the future. Corporate counsel bring deep skill, structure, order, logic, leadership and advisory capabilities imperative for decision making, commercial planning, managing complex work and responding to current and future challenges for their organisations,” said Dr Katherine King, Dazychain co-founder and COO, who was the lead author on the report.
The study highlighted how in-house counsel have had to rapidly boost their support to their organisations while operating via a remote work setup during lockdown. Respondents pointed out that they have needed to be accessible and better prepared given the value of lawyers’ skills to their businesses.
“There's not a meeting in the business now that can happen without legal being involved. You're being pulled from pillar to post, which has been quite a challenge. … But we've also got skills in organising and putting things sequentially; analysing things and obviously [spotting] risks,” said one respondent, a legal counsel from a multinational company.
Nonetheless, the vital role of lawyers in organisations has not translated to a boost in the budget for a sizable percentage of respondents despite an increased workload due to COVID-19. While 60% of respondents said that there were no changes to the budgets established for 2020 as a result of the pandemic, 37% said that their departments’ budgets were slashed; only 3% reported an increase in budget to address the shifting needs of the organisation.
“In other words, those reporting an impact reported decreases in legal department budgets ten times more frequently than increases,” King said.
The study showed that most of the organisations who maintained their budgets were from businesses that are considered essential, like financial services, information technology and services and hospital and health care.
Thus, as workloads increase across the board with either no change to or a drop in the legal department budget for 74% of respondents, 80% of the senior in-house counsel interviewed for the study revealed that they have been briefing out work to law firms, King said.
“Law firms on panels and pre-approved lists were legal departments’ go-to while the pandemic created legal queries from the wider business on implications to their contractual obligations,” King said.
The study also looked into legal departments’ adoption of technology, the expected impact of COVID-19 on their organisations’ financial performance and the long-term changes to working life.