Related Posts
Tell me a story?
Bowl Leader
Coach
Conversation Starter
Chief
I kinda miss the person I used to be 15 years ago.
Conversation Starter
Additional Posts in In-House Counsel
Anybody at LVMH/subsidiary?
Conversation Starter
Pro
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I think maybe the intent of the question (or at least the right question) is more “How do you avoid the perception of only being a cost center in house?”
The answer is more in who you are than what you are. Be a connector of people. Add value wherever you can. Help strategize and look into the future. Use your critical thinking skills to assess more than just legal matters. The more people that want to ask you questions, that stop by for a chat, that want you involved even when you don’t think you need to be there. The more you can add intangible value, the less people will care about how much of a cost center legal is.
Thanks!
To add on to what A1 said, you also learn to communicate your real value.
Legal can be considered “cost center” by many because you don’t actively bring in revenue, but the reality is you still add considerable value to the company by mitigating risk and learning to communicate the costs that would be incurred if you weren’t there helps counter the cost center perception.
You don’t. Your job is to be there for your company and they pay you for that- hence the “cost center.” There is no way to bring in work but you can help grow the company and raise funds to at lease offset this perception of cost.
Pro
Catch business people’s mistakes
Toot your own horn. I was negotiating a Media Rights Deal for a YouTube channel and the contract included an exclusivity provision that limited the channel’s ability to publish ANY content from the event it was promoting. Had the owners completed the deal themselves, they would have just signed it and lost out on significant income over the two day event. By them paying a small fee for me to review, we got that provision removed as it applied to them.
Pro
Never say “no” without also saying “but here’s how you could do it”.
Right—- I always thought of it as never a know but a “Yes, if…. You do x,y,z.”
Show your value. Always going to be a cost center. If you can win a nice lawsuit (as plaintiff) though that’ll buy some goodwill when you get a nice check
Engage an IP firm to give free in-house training to marketing and R&D teams and develop a 'ways of working' document to encourage engagement with legal at key milestones in design, development and exploitation. Giving all corners of the business the education and tools to understand risk and how IP protection can maximise returns. Equipping them to do some basic identical searching themselves. Saving and creating $ return. (I train in-house teams for free a lot, so this should definitely be something you can arrange without cost. A lot of firms will see it as an opportunity to connect).
As others have said, you don't make product for sale and the company is not selling your services to 3rd parties, so you are a cost center, but your value can be measured in cost mitigation (paying less for outside counsel, getting better rates), risk reduction, which can be very real and measurable if it positively affects lending terms or credit rating. Risk reduction can be in a lot of areas including product dev and safety. Managing IP portfolio strategically. Improving outcomes in negotiations or adverse actions, etc. Try and keep a spreadsheet of status quo and improvements you suggested to show how much legal can contribute to the bottom line. Just bc you are a cost center doesn't mean you can't influence revenues and costs disproportionately
The more you have market terms and deal structures at your fingertips, the more people will value your insight.
Accelerate contract execution.