Everyone's a Lawyer

In house counsel can’t monitor every aspect of an enterprise on their own. One of the additional benefits of creating sophisticated consumers of legal services is that you can leverage the help of all employees to act as an extension of the law department.

I like to say that “everyone’s a lawyer.” By this, I don’t mean that all employees should feel free to dispense legal advice, but rather that all employees should understand the connection between their daily duties and the legal issues that are likely to arise from their jobs. Employees empowered with this knowledge will act as a distant early warning system to sound an alert when the missiles of new legal issues are headed your way.

In an environment where proactivity and “seeing around corners “ is at a premium, a little advance notice can be the difference between needing an ounce of prevention or a ton of cure.