Consultation board round table: motivating and developing in-house talent

The Practical Law In-house Consultation Board convened recently to discuss the theme of career progression in the in-house legal team. The discussion was timely as the profession begins to get to grips with the impact of the new Solicitors Qualification Exam (SQE) as the principal route to qualification as a solicitor in England and Wales (see Article, SQE and law firms: trouble and SQEak). The board members generally expressed their support for these reforms but many of them now face the task of navigating this new landscape to best nurture junior talent.

Board members had a great deal to share across a range of other often intersecting areas including the:

There were also some interesting views on the skill sets that thrive in the modern in-house legal team and how these have changed in recent times.

While not all board members had direct experience of managing teams impacted by the reforms, there was broad support for the new SQE system. The drive to increase access to the profession by removing or reducing financial and academic barriers was viewed as a welcome boost to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda for in-house teams.

Gurminder Kaur Nijjar, Head of Legal Operations at Coventry Building Society, remarked: "I'm very supportive of the SQE in principle, on the basis that it opens up qualification to a wider and more diverse pool of talent."

However, some concern was expressed about the continued focus on exams, particularly as the SQE assessments have a lower pass rate so far than those of the Legal Practice Course among candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. There also remains a question mark over whether the sustained concentration required for exams exacerbate barriers to neurodiversity.

The board was generally encouraged that the SQE would lead to a reduction in the exploitation of those striving away for years as paralegals in the often vain hope of securing a training contract. The fact that all work experience will count was viewed as a positive development.

Natalie Salunke, Head of Legal at RVU and an examiner for the SQE said she was "generally supportive because it creates the opportunity for people to own their careers themselves". Salunke added: "I hope it brings an end to the phenomenon of the perpetual paralegal, depending on the patronage of firms and GCs. All their legal experience will count for more, and that means a lot. The work for the trainee principal is also significantly less, so I hope it means more people will want to do the right thing by pre-qualification paralegals."

The battle for top junior talent is fierce, and in crude money stakes corporates are onto a loser against large law firms, so having a credible and engaging story to tell candidates about career progression is vital. One board member commented that high salaries at the very junior end of the market in private practice make it difficult to compete for top talent on salary alone, but the business exposure gained in-house and the opportunity to grow into a role of trusted advisor, rather than just a lawyer, is invaluable.

Salunke further emphasised the importance of getting beyond the money question with potential hires and to the heart of why people want to be lawyers in the first place: "A lot of the conversations I've been having recently have been more like coaching than pure management. For me that's a real selling point for people working in-house. Do you want to sit and do pagination for someone with limited EQ in private practice or do you want to work in a safe space where you can have open and honest conversations about your needs and wants?"

Avoiding the competitive recruitment market as much as possible and adopting a "grow your own" strategy of developing junior team members in-house certainly has its appeal, but board members cautioned against an overreliance on this approach.

Kaur Nijjar commented: "One of the big debates is this: do you hire in knowledge or grow your own? There are advantages to both and essentially the best teams are going to want to do a bit of each to get the balance right. The big risk with growing your own is that your people develop in a particular corporate culture and if that evolves you have to change with it. Sometimes you need to bring in outside voices to benchmark the way things are done."

This search for balance is difficult but critical for long term success. For example, Elaine Mays, a legal and compliance consultant highlighted that, while consultants can offer specific skill sets and provide valuable and immediate expertise, building a cohesive in-house team is key for an organisation, and tends to lead to increased employee satisfaction.

This need to balance internal team cohesion with staying open to fresh thinking from outside was a theme throughout the conversation. It is reflected in some of the approaches that board members and their teams have adopted to ensure team structures are set up to handle the challenges they face, while providing interesting work and a sense of career progression to team members. This presents itself in more traditional ways, such as via the use of lawyer secondments (see Making the most of secondments), but increasingly in more innovative and radical ways through the deployment of non-lawyers such as tech-savvy legal operations specialists in leadership roles (see The rise of the non-lawyer).

When approaching the important question of team structure, it is crucial to take a step back and ensure you understand what the business needs from its legal team. It is then a case of identifying gaps and filling them. Kaur Nijjar explained: "Ultimately, you need to start by thinking about the goals and pain points of the team first – and then work out what are the best options for meeting those goals and dealing with those pain points, all with the backdrop and drive to support the overall business strategy."

Salunke added: "For me, it's about doing the work to find out what gaps the team has – and then finding someone who is passionate about filling them."

The market does provide some alternative options. For example, Rebecca Annison, now Head of Engagement at the Chancery Lane Project and formerly in-house at Carillion, explained how her colleagues at Carillion sought to be creative with the opportunity provided by the oversupply of law school graduates. Rewarding career progression was provided by designing workflows that graduates could operate to do low risk activities that did not require a lawyer but had meaningful value in terms of the individuals' personal and technical development.

Annison described a workflow pyramid in which every team member, at whatever their level of experience and technical expertise, regularly gets challenged with new and exciting types of work: "In practice, that means sending work down the pyramid as quickly as you possibly can. Have your most senior people do it first time around, then build your precedents, processes and templates to enable junior lawyers, then bright new graduates and ultimately AI, to pick it up second, third and fourth time. That fresh flow of good quality, challenging work is what keeps people growing."

Another board member agreed and, adopting Annison's pyramid metaphor, explained how their legal team has substantially improved overall outcomes for the business: "One useful tip we have found is to use inexperience to try to push things down the pyramid quicker: trying to explain something to someone who doesn't know how to do it and iterating with them to figure out how they can get up to speed is really helpful. People who are less caught up in their expertise are more likely to see where a process or automation can help make something work."

The traditional verticals of the legal career continue to provide something of a straitjacket for in-house lawyers as they think about their career progression. Salunke challenged the narrow-mindedness that is still pervasive: "If we thought about legal careers more holistically, we'd probably have fewer existential crises as a profession. We shouldn't be so fixed in our vertical progression models – an in-house trainee might be a perfect fit for a private practice role, or a role outside the profession in operations or procurement."

Several members of the board emphasised the value of candour and transparency when it comes to progressing individuals' careers. Naturally, at times individual aspirations and business requirements are in conflict, and the individual may need to move on to progress their career. As Salunke explained: "It's important to be honest with the team. Admitting that someone needs to move to grow doesn't have to be a bad conversation. Moving on can be a win-win if you approach it consciously and are committed to helping people progress in the profession; sometimes leaving an organisation can happen for a positive reason, so don't judge people who take charge of their journey and do just that."

Although the traditional verticals of the legal career still dominate in-house, Salunke noted that progress is much more fluid and a career in-house, whether in one organisation or involving several moves, can be more sustainable. Some lawyers are driven by a work-life balance, rather than a higher salary and are often looking for roles that provide interesting work over three or four days per week. Maximising these key selling points is essential for those recruiting senior talent in the same way as those seeking to attract talent in-house at the start of their careers.

Secondments of law firm trainees into six-month in-house seats are a long-established way of resourcing corporate legal teams and there was a general perception that they remained an important and valuable way for private practitioners and in-house lawyers to interact and understand each other. A thoughtfully executed programme can be a real asset to all parties. One board member explained how their legal department's secondee programme has become highly sought after because it is "taken seriously as an investment in and opportunity for the secondees". They added: "We don't use secondees only to take on the less complicated work. We offer them, with support, a chance to grow."

There were one or two reservations. In particular, there needs to be an acceptance that using secondees to carry out work may adversely impact delivery times in the short-term. Salunke stressed the need for secondments to be business driven but valued the sense of perspective they can provide to all involved if done well. Individual characteristics and skill sets are of course crucial to success: "We've had people turn up from private practice terrified of having to make decisions; along with our fair share of people who deign to give advice, are patronising, write long emails and are not solution-focussed."

Other forms of internal secondments have also been successful. In some organisations people move from the business into the legal team frequently. This has the dual benefit of helping with the resourcing of the legal team and gives opportunities to people who may want to move into the legal team to gain a different perspective and new skills.

Annison was keen to stress the value of secondments from the legal team to elsewhere in the business: "Lawyers should be encouraged to move into other areas of the organisation - for example, Sales, Procurement or Strategy - as this experience gives them a better understanding of the business. It also helps them build relationships that endure once they return to the legal team."

Rapid technological and cultural change within organisations has left its mark on in-house legal teams. At the frontline of this shift is the emergence of the legal operations specialist. Kaur Nijjar explained the logic at the heart of this: "Reframing my role as 'head of legal operations' helped move the conversation along from thinking in a closed lawyer/non-lawyer way to thinking more holistically about what functional needs we have and how best to fulfil them. We need analysts and process specialists, as well as legal subject matter experts, and they can all bring a lot to the table that doesn’t necessarily require legal training as a pre-requisite – this really encourages a level of neurodiversity inclusion too which I’ve seen the value of in practice."

She added: "When you're working in a one-of-a-kind situation, where there are no templates or precedents to follow, it's important to consider the tools to hand and the wider framework within which we are operating and not get side-tracked by, for example, one area of subject matter expertise. One of the key ways forward is to think about governance and output and how our people (both lawyers/non-lawyers) can help us reach the end goal”.

Another board member echoed Kaur Nijjar on the importance of governance experts whom they consider critical to the functioning of the modern legal team, and in designing the processes and structures of the organisation beyond it.

There was a consensus among the board that the skill sets of those working in in-house legal teams had changed significantly in recent years. The in-house counsel role now goes way beyond simply advising the business about legal issues. It encompasses a range of skills including project management, governance, policy development and horizon scanning.

Kaur Nijjar commented: "The skills needed in-house are constantly evolving but I've felt freer to say out loud how important it is for in-house lawyers to be able to advise the business, do governance not just advice, be generalist in their outlook, spot efficiencies and, most important of all, have the creative capacity to solve problems."

There was a general sense that the ivory tower legal team is, or should be, a thing of the past and that lawyers working in-house are expected to act as business partners and get their hands dirty on a range of issues beyond black letter law. Alison Tamm, Group Risk Director at Control Risks, where she is part of a wider Legal, Risk and Compliance function, summed up what is now expected as "multidisciplinary, solutions-focused individuals who can understand and get close to the business". She continued: "A combined team of Risk, Compliance and Legal professionals allows skills to be shared across the team. This approach also enables lawyers to avoid being pigeon-holed and to move within the team to a Risk or Compliance role."

There is also a growing acceptance that human skills, such as emotional intelligence, influencing and building trust, are now fundamental for in-house lawyers. In-house lawyers need to be "client-ready" and be able to wear multiple hats and look credible in each of them. But in a rapidly changing and often uncertain world, the essential goals of the role remain the same: translating ambiguity into clarity and providing the courage and ethics to lead from the front when called on.