Colleagues vs. Clients

I was reminded after last Friday’s post that another distinction between inside counsel and private practice is that for in-house counsel your clients are your co-workers. That may seem like an obvious distinction, but it makes a crucial difference in how legal advice is provided and received.

A few years ago, I attended a Practicing Law Institute seminar in NYC where Ben Heineman, former general counsel of GE, spoke about how he encouraged his law department to refer to their business partners as colleagues rather than clients. I think that’s a great idea because it reminds that both counsel and colleagues are in the same boat and need to be rowing in the same direction. Using the word “colleague” avoids the sense of otherness that the word “client” imparts.

Yes, in-house counsel do have certain ethical and professional obligations that can go beyond the corporate work relationship, and yes, I do sometimes use the word “client” with my team to remind them that we are performing a service function, but I like the distinction that Heineman makes.

This is a variation on what I sometimes refer to as the “pronoun problem.” On more than one occasion, I have seen a junior attorney tell a colleague, “you have a problem that you will need to fix” when it should nearly always be “we have a problem that I can help you fix.” All members of a business enterprise, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, share an identity of interest. Using the word “colleague” neatly captures this idea.