A field guide for in-house lawyers with more work than time
Six situations every general counsel knows. Each chapter shows one thing you can make this week, and the guides that take it further.
| Request | From | Lawyer? |
|---|---|---|
| NDA for a new reseller | Sales | No |
| Supplier's MSA, liability clause | Procurement | Yes |
| Can we use this customer logo? | Marketing | No |
| Renewal of the CRM contract | Finance | No |
| Customer wants an uncapped indemnity | Sales | Yes |
3 of 5 could have been handled without a lawyer.
You have more requests than hours
The queue is the most common problem in-house. It is rarely solved by working faster, and usually by sorting the work so routine requests no longer need a lawyer to start them.
This week
For two weeks, log every request that reaches you: what it was, who asked, and whether it needed legal judgement. The ones that did not are your list for templates and self-service.
| Clause | We ask | We accept | We walk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Liability cap | 12 months' fees | 24 months' fees | Uncapped |
| Payment | 30 days net | 45 days net | Over 60 days |
| Renewal | 12 months, auto | 24 months | Exit for convenience |
Three clauses, three lines each. Beyond "we accept", ask the general counsel.
You need a playbook but have no time to write one
Written positions are what let anyone else negotiate for you. You do not need a project to get there: your past redlines already contain most of the playbook.
This week
Pick the three clauses you negotiate most. For each, write one line for what you ask, one for what you accept if pushed, and one for where you walk away. That is a usable first playbook, and it takes an hour.
- Sells
- Route planning software to mid-size hauliers
- Signs as
- Kestrel Logistics Oy, Kestrel Logistics AB
- Decides
- CFO, then the CEO above 100k
- Worries about
- Customer data, one large reseller
Next three dates
- 14 OctNotice deadline, CRM renewal
- 1 NovDPA review with the new host
- 28 NovBoard pack, legal update
You work as fractional counsel, or are thinking about hiring one
Fractional general counsels bring senior in-house judgement part-time, often to several companies at once. The legal work is familiar; organising it across clients is the new skill.
This week
Keep a one-page brief for every client: what they sell, which entities sign, who decides, what they worry about and the next three dates. Five minutes with it before a client day replaces half an hour of remembering.
90 days' notice. The date that matters is 1 October, not 1 January: put that one in a shared calendar.
You are not sure what you have already signed
Renewals and notice dates are where small legal teams lose money without noticing. Knowing what is signed, and when it renews, is the foundation for everything else.
This week
Start with the contracts that renew automatically. List each with its end date and notice period, and put the notice date, not the end date, in a calendar someone other than you can see.
| What good looks like | Tool A | Tool B |
|---|---|---|
| Finds the non-standard terms | Pass | Pass |
| Applies our positions, not market terms | Pass | Fail |
| Explains each change in plain words | Pass | Pass |
| Keeps our fallbacks out of its comments | Fail | Fail |
Write the criteria before the demo, not after it.
You are deciding what to do about AI
The question is no longer whether AI can help legal work, but which work to hand it, which tool fits a small in-house team, and how to roll it out without it failing quietly.
This week
Before choosing any tool, pick one task you do every week, such as first-pass NDA review, and write down what a good result looks like. Test every tool on that task with your own documents.
Example baseline. Measure it once before changing anything.
You are shaping how the legal function works
For general counsel building or rebuilding a legal department: priorities, measurement, law firm spend and what peers are doing.
This week
Measure one thing before changing anything: the median time from a contract request to a contract ready to sign, per contract type. It is the number the business feels.
Written by lawyers who work with in-house teams
