The In-House Community is currently hosting a series of half-hour skills webinars for in-house lawyers. We ask Mark Prebble from Lawyers in Business who is presenting them to share some of his thinking with us.
What do you see as the principal challenges for in-house lawyers?
To take positive action to restore responsibility for managing legal risk to those in the organisation who have abdicated responsibility on the strength of the legal team’s existence
To resist the temptation to confiscate management of legal risk from others who supposedly cannot be relied upon
To embark on more systematic programmes to improve the levels of legal awareness within their organisations
To improve and measure their level of business acumen
To become more goal focused than task oriented
To balance personal ambition and collegial support
To become adept at managing stress and combating negativity
Why did you propose the subjects you are covering for this series?
I want to stimulate attendees to approach these important subjects in a less ad hoc way. From my work with in-house lawyers in many different companies and different regions, I have often found that in-house lawyers are not sufficiently encouraged to devote time to them.
There are many subjects which are candidates for the webinar treatment. These four have linkages but also work on a stand-alone basis.
Is a half-hour session long enough to do justice to these subjects?
The 30 minute session provides sufficient time to share some practical tips and encourage attendees to pursue the subjects further. The time allocation makes them less vulnerable to intervening priorities. I find it regrettable that in many organisations a training session is regarded as expendable. When I run full day workshops, there is always at least one participant who does not benefit fully from the day as they are constantly leaving the room to take or make calls.
Do you enjoy running webinars?
I am not sure ‘enjoy’ is the right verb. As someone who enjoys establishing a rapport with workshop participants and likes to adapt content according to reaction, I found them unsatisfactory when I started. However they enable me to share material with attendees across a wide geographic area in a very cost effective way. Workshops are more enjoyable, but travel and venue costs place them in a different league.
How do you compensate for limited interaction?
There is no denying that there is much less interaction than in a workshop. However the multiple choice questions which I pose during the sessions enable attendees to express a view or report on their experience and I think they find the results interesting. Without doubt online answers are more honest and there are fewer abstentions than in a workshop – why are we so timid sometimes to reveal our point of view? The ability to pose frank questions to me, to which I will generally respond by email after the session, is clearly useful for some attendees.
If there are several members of the same team who are interested in a subject, what would you suggest?
There are a number of options:
One member of the team could attend and then share the materials with colleagues at a team meeting – the terms permit this.
The team could contact the In-House Community (via tim.gilkison@inhousecommunity.com) and arrange for a dedicated session for the team which would be run as a web meeting rather than a webinar.
Have you had much experience of working in Asia?
When I was an employed in-house lawyer, I was lucky enough to do a lot of work in Asia. The only countries in the region where I have not worked are Vietnam, North Korea, Myanmar and Cambodia. Since I set up Lawyers in Business in 1998 I have worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. There is no doubt that it is an especially challenging area for in-house lawyers, because many businesses are not convinced of the value which we can deliver and many business leaders are impatient with legal hurdles or anxieties, and anyone who seeks to explain them!
What about the Middle East?
My employed in-house roles involved working in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE. I have delivered training and coaching in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
What do you do when you are not running webinars?
I run training workshops for in-house lawyers – public sessions and bespoke sessions for teams. These range from half-day sessions to a week’s residential course. I provide coaching, mentoring and consulting services. I undertake assignments or projects in legal teams. I write briefing notes and think of ways in which I can help in-house lawyers confront the many challenges of today’s business environment. And to help clear my mind and keep my feet on the ground, I do forestry work (I have a small woodland) and grow vegetables!
How to enroll
There is still time to register for the following Essential Skills webinars:
– Gaining influence in your organisation
– Prioritising effort and assessing risk
For more information or to enroll, please click here.
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