People and persuasion techniques for in-house lawyers

When it comes to communication, some in-house lawyers might feel that they can struggle to get their point across.

Or, worse still, they are misunderstood or get swayed by stronger characters.

This can make persuading someone to take your advice or delivering a difficult message hard.

When starting out and working with a large number of people in a business, having an awareness of their individual communication preferences and adapting to them can be really effective.

It boils down to different personality types. Whilst we can’t change how people communicate with us, we can change how we communicate with them.

For example, you might be someone who’s very detail-oriented and likes to methodically consider all issues.

Successfully engaging a stakeholder who prefers a quick face-to-face summary of an issue to make a decision will have to involve changing your approach to get your message across.

Conversely, if your boss likes to know the details and workings of your decisions and you say, “Right, I’ve done all the thinking and here are my three high-level points”, they’re going to be frustrated.

It’s something that you can learn. Researching personality types and traits and taking a personality colour test can be a good place to start.

You can find training sessions on this, or you can look online for a ‘colour personality traits’ test.

The book Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson is a good read.

Robyn says understanding different personality types can be key in communicating effectively.

Frame legal issues for business minds

I’ve worked with all sorts of people in different businesses.

The ability to take a legal issue that is complicated, and present it back to the business in a down-to-earth, concise, commercial way, means you’re much more likely to get your point across.

Without that framing, often people might think, “Oh it’s a legal problem, it’s not my area.

That’s a tricky place to be because you need people to understand how it is their issue. For example, it is a commercial issue, or a financial problem – with a legal angle.

It’s really important to get your stakeholders on board by making sure they know what the business issues are.

If you’re advising on risk, you’ve got to make sure people understand what the risks are and that they’re tangible.

It’s about taking the legal issue and turning it into a business issue in a meaningful way.

For example, go beyond, “We could be in breach of contract”. What does that mean to a person sitting in the business?

Could the company lose money? Could someone lose their job?

You want to get to a position where your stakeholders think, “OK, this is important for us”.

The clearer you can relay that, the more successful your relationships are, and the quicker things get done.

Find ways to engage with people

As lawyers, it’s really helpful to hear about things early, and before they go wrong.

Something I’ve found helpful, and that I recommend in-house lawyers implement, is holding a ‘legal clinic’, once a week or so.

This is a physical or online drop-in session where colleagues bring their legal questions. I’ve always really enjoyed this aspect of in-house work – talking to lots of different people.

For me, I’ve done a physical ‘clinic’ where I’ve sat in a place at a set day and time, and people come and chat.

Some ‘quick questions’ would reveal massive things, which I wouldn’t otherwise have found out about until they ballooned into something greater.

Often, people don’t know that something could go wrong, which makes this approach all the more important.

For junior lawyers particularly, ‘clinics’ or a Microsoft Teams drop-in can help get some control over repeat requests that fly in from all over the business.

Ringfencing your time in a helpful way means you’re more efficient at dealing with enquiries. It also makes stakeholders feel like they’ve got ‘special lawyer time’.

I always think it’s useful for juniors to conduct training, too. Maybe you could run a quarterly ‘lunch and learn’ session?

I know a lot don’t like doing training, but it is a great way to heighten the profile of legal.

You don’t have to go overkill: keep it informal but useful.

Conducting training and running ‘clinics’ can be effective ways of engaging with people in your organisation.

Develop confidence in your own work and ethical obligations

If you’re a junior and somebody senior says something you think is incorrect from a legal or ethical standpoint, it’s worth remembering there are people you can go to for advice – it doesn’t all sit with you.

If it’s someone in the business, you would go to your head of legal.

If it’s your general counsel, talk it through with the senior lawyers.

I think it does take a degree of confidence to say: “I don’t think you’re right here” or “We need to find a different approach”.

I’m sure there are junior lawyers who are much more confident than I was, but I would have found it quite difficult to say when I was only a year or so qualified.

But that’s where you want to get to – to be bold and confident – and know when your team needs to pause and have a look from a different angle.

Be human

I don’t think my career would have gone the same way if I had not enjoyed and thrived on making human connections and having a personal approach to how I deal with people.

Don’t be afraid to be ‘human’ and find the humour in some situations, says Robyn (pictured here).

Being genuine is about being interested in people, their development, what impacts the business, and how you can help shape that.

It’s about being practical and reassuring, but also not taking everything so seriously and being able to find the humour in some situations.

It’s nice to have the light side as well as being able to give that serious message. You can do both.

Human skills and characteristics are, for me, so important for in-house lawyers.

Nurture them. It makes life more fun and interesting!