6 Steps to Success as a Legal Team of One
Many times, companies make their first hire in legal leadership - i.e. General Counsels (GCs) and Chief Legal Officers (CLOs) - during a crazy growth season, or because of a problem. Whether you’re new or just operating solo, being a team of one is tough. Office memes don’t help either–often legal is seen as the team of “no.” To add value and build internal allies, a solo attorney needs a roadmap.
In this eBook, we share six focus areas for one-person legal teams. These include day-one tactics and longer-term priorities.
Plus, we’ll feature specific advice from Tim Parilla, LinkSquares’ Chief Legal Officer. Before LinkSquares, he spent seven years as GC at DraftKings – where he too was the first in-house attorney – and built the legal function from the ground up. Read on to learn more.
Pain Point: Unsure what success looks like.
Priority: Understand why you were hired.
Clearly, your company believes an in-house attorney will add value (even if the team is just one person, so far.) The challenge is defining what that value actually means. Spend time figuring this out: Ask around and get to know your peers and company leadership. The early days (especially) provide great pretext for exploring–and uncovering opportunities and clarifying success.
“Drill past anything vague (e.g. - ‘We have contract concerns’) to define addressable issues. From there, identify what you can solve. Target easy, early wins because these provide credibility and support longer term problem solving." - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Pain Point: Trying to do too much (and getting nothing important done.)
Priority: Create a proactive plan, even if it ultimately changes.
After you’ve evaluated what success looks like, reflect on what you–as a one-person legal team–can do. This doesn’t mean everything.
Take into account what has already been accomplished, then get a handle on basic issues like understanding existing obligations and learning what operational risks exist in certain business relationships. Take time to understand existing software, tools, and applications, and gather insights into existing contracts to assess threats and areas of opportunity.
Then, categorize action by return and time.
For example: If you identify contract drafting process fixes as important, consider an automated solution. Alternately, if you need to streamline deal closing by coordinating with Sales, Support, and Finance, consider testing contract management tool connections to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or accounting system. These may deliver big returns in a reasonably short time.
One in-house counsel also shares that a bias to act–even if hesitant or risk-averse–is essential. “An unhelpful hangover from the days of being an associate is a mindset that says: ‘I’ll advise the client on the law, with caveats, and the client will then make a decision.’”
“Many things provide value, but not everything provides value at the same level or over the same time period. Look for high-impact, low-hours projects. Then, move to other important, but not urgent activities that share value. Also, the business now looks to you for critical decisions. The best path to success is by asking insightful questions, learning the business top to bottom, and to actually take a position on issues (yes, especially ‘business’ issues).” - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Pain Point: Weak internal documents and processes.
Priority: Rebuild the basics.
A legal team of one must remember that they can’t fix everything. Instead, focus on the fundamentals, suggests Sterling Miller, former GC at Marketo. At a minimum, this list should include –
- Updating basic corporation documents, including articles of incorporation, by-laws, and LCC documents as founders often prepare these using DIY forms or templates.
- Cleaning up, or preparing a cap table showing equity positions. “Particularly, because founders will care once they get diluted during financing.”
- Ensuring the right human resources policies are in place as “HR is often an afterthought at growth companies.”
- Preparing form agreements for common contracts–while installing a repeatable contracting process.
- Getting ahead of data privacy and data security issues.
- Protecting IP like trademarks, patents, copyrights, and trade secrets. “For many small companies, IP is the crown jewel and if it gets improperly copied or stolen then all the value of the company falls away.”
"Focus on your project management and maintaining an organized legal function. For your contracts, create a single source of truth. For other matters, establish a working relationship with business stakeholders and get to know how they work best, and adapt your practices to enable them to work with you in a way that best suits them. You’re a service provider, make it easy for them to get value out of you.” - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Pain Point: Overwhelmed with manual work.
Priority: Create leverage with technology.
While you may not be able to hire another attorney today, the right contract management software (CLM) is the superpower you need. Before modern CLM solutions, tasks like drafting, finalizing, analyzing, and monitoring consumed full days.
Today, leading CLM platforms apply automation.
By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), software can now read and understand contracts. Automation also allows legal teams to better collaborate with business owners. The typical flurry of emails (or, worse, faxes and paper envelopes) for sending contract drafts and approvals is eliminated with a good CLM suite.
CLM solutions also extend organizational capacity. “One person legal teams cannot afford documentation and access scattered throughout the company,” shares Parilla.
CLM platforms provide a centralized repository for all stored, access, or shared contracts. This is particularly helpful in light of remote and hybrid work. CLM solutions not only allow legal teams to operate more efficiently, but by automating tedious grunt work, lawyers unlock more time to focus on strategic work instead of tracking down contracts.
“In order to benefit from automation as quickly as possible, evaluate solutions based on their time-to-value. As an early adopter of Legal Tech at DraftKings, I didn’t have a guidebook or primer on what to look for. I had to make decisions based on intuition, common sense, and impact. One of the most important factors I came to consider for any Legal Tech deployment was time-to-value. In an industry that (traditionally) lives and dies by billable hours, time-to-value is a clear, measurable yardstick.” - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Pain Point: Loneliness and little cooperation or camaraderie.
Priority: Prioritize relationship building.
The crooners in Three Dog Night were right: One is the loneliest number. New GCs and CLOs must develop strong relationships; both for role satisfaction as well as to get work done with internal “clients" like Customer Success, IT, Finance, and Sales.
Remember too, companies don't typically go from zero to in-house counsel – someone at your organization handled legal issues before your arrival – even if it was a business stakeholder coordinating with outside counsel. Get to know these people. They will understand how the business addressed legal issues in the past and can help you execute going forward.
Prioritize proximity, too. Above the Law recommends asking for an ofice near C-level peers or–for anyone fully remote–scheduling regular meetings with a CEO, CFO, and other executives. By building relationships in advance of a crisis, you’ll “unearth important problems and nip them in the bud.”
“Build a network of lawyers to expand your department without adding headcount. Join organizations or reach out to others in a similar role at a startup or growth company. Leverage your existing contacts (including outside firms). Building a brain trust to swap insights is akin to creating your own board of directors.” - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Pain Point: Business leaders think one in-house attorney is enough.
Priority: Track performance, then build your business case.
Leadership consultancy Spencer Stuart shares how high performers figure out how to “assemble legal teams of internal and external resources effectively.” But, a common challenge at growth companies: there’s no plan for more help.
“An overlooked problem for GCs and CLOs is commercial awareness. You need to understand the business, make adjustments, and understand how the business perceives the value you add. Having a tool that can help provide quantitative metrics for the work you perform is invaluable. If you can quantitatively show your impact, getting more headcount/resources will be easy.” - Tim Parilla, Chief Legal Officer at LinkSquares
Naturally, balancing things like commercial progress and compliance is tricky. Still, consider the hard-number impact of the work you do – and track the Sales and Customer Support outcomes. By monitoring metrics, including total legal spend, outside counsel spend, matter types by spend, and timekeeper rate comparison, you can build the financial case for expanding your team.
A long and successful tenure won’t happen by accident. By defining success, prioritizing tasks, developing rapport, and evolving as a data-driven leader, you establish yourself as a valuable business partner.
LinkSquares is here to help one-attorney teams at growth companies power their performance. If you’re ready to write better agreements, close deals faster, and understand every contract–while saving time and money–then contact LinkSquares today.