"One law firm holds meetings that go on for hours, when the key points could have been summed up succinctly," said another. "The leading partner is self-absorbed and likes to hold court. I think he's been watching too many TV dramas about lawyers, when the reality is we just want a quick answer! On top of this we're paying for the privilege to listen to him drone on."

I mean, to be fair, the answer here is just change your fcuking panel lawyers? If you stop rewarding him for this he'll get the message

Reminds me of a 45+ year old city partner pitching to me who felt the need in his presentation to mention 3 times in 20 minutes that he went to Cambridge.

The person who said such horrible, unwarranted things about Ru Paul-esque events should be fired immediately, cancelled on all social media, and shunned by all right-thinking people. What a horrible, bitter troll they must be. I feel sullied even skimming their hateful comment. Urgh.

GC need to understand that not everything is black and white.  If there’s no clear authority on the question posed, it would be negligent to confidently assert one possibility as the truth.

I’ll summarise the risks and the probabilities of the realistic options. I’ll tell you what I recommend. But it’s up to you to decide on your appetite for risk.

As for all the waffle that follows the executive summary - that’s to cover my bum in case you later suggest that my summary was negligently lacking in nuance.

"Stop all the woke bullshit. I don't want to attend an evening with someone from Ru Paul's drag race talking about their journey. Stop emailing me about this stuff. I don't care!"

I like this chap's style. Can definitely oblige this request.

Someone hit me up with an RFP.

CoffeeTime 16 June 23 09:24: people who go to  Oxbridge are the intellectual cream of their generation. You should be grateful to have someone of that calibre advising you.

"We don't have time to decipher pages and pages of waffle with a concluding paragraph that fails to provide a definite course of action, leaving it up to us to decide".

Sometimes there isn't a clear, obvious course of action, so advice can be 'on the fence', so we can only do so much when advising (setting aside issues of negligence if we strongly advise on a specific course of action). 

God forbid you will actually have to advise your internal client based on information provided by external counsel!

This. Recently, after waiting two months for a note of regulatory advice, I received a 12 page Word document copying out the entirety of the legislation, with no actual advice on what we should do.

And the endless firms chucking their clause bank at every contract, regardless of the importance, value, urgency or size of their client vs the other side. (Yes, Bloomberg are of course going to change their standard terms for a £5k contract with Microfirm Ltd). And of course bringing in their Data Protection, IP, and Dispute Resolution colleagues for their views on the standard terms.

And before you say "change lawyers", I have, I am, and I will. These are all mistakes I'll try hard not to repeat.

Feels good to vent.

In-house lawyers are so third rate. They spend their days leafing through Legal 500, deciding who they will delegate their work to. 

To Anonymous 16 June 23 09:28:

You don't get it. Sometimes you have to wear a bit of negligence risk to be an effective advisor. I have to do it 100 times a day when I'm asked to give a view on the spot, to be actioned immediately. Obviously it depends on the size of the issue, but for a lot of small matters "I'd do this, not that, if I were you", is all that we want or need.

@Vexed GC 16 June 23 09:56 - no, you don’t get it. If you did, you wouldn’t be in-house. 

"So many lawyers must get sore bums from sitting on the fence."

Showing what we already know; that external solicitors are more concerned with covering their a*ses than they are with providing advice. 

"that’s to cover my bum in case you later suggest that my summary was negligently lacking in nuance."

Well quite...

A classic of the genre of contradictory client thinking (and clients of all kinds want this, not just in-house counsel) on one hand can you please just do all the thinking for me and just tell me what I should do, on the other hand can you please also be liable for not telling me every last possible risk and option that I could be aware of so that I can blame you for my failure to spot it if it comes up.

Like, obviously no.

Unless you want to release me from liability for not telling you everything, I need to tell you everything. Without that you're just asking me to play roulette with the firm's insurance cover.

IH-ers: Why retain the designation "lawyer" when you evidently have no clue about law and require those that do to review a 5k contract?

All in-house is capable of is DP, IP and stock DR clauses.  Why engage external for tings other than those big?

Stop whinging and be happy you scraped the LPC.

"you have to wear a bit of negligence risk to be an effective advisor"

Yes, that's right. Sometimes you've got to be a bit negligent to be good.

On second thoughts, maybe not one to put in the training manual...

“We don't have time to decipher pages and pages of waffle with a concluding paragraph that fails to provide a definite course of action, leaving it up to us to decide,"

…

"Please think about how you could deliver training which in-house lawyers can use on a practical level instead of just vomiting the law (we are perfectly capable of reading)."

So you don’t want us to tell you the law because you don’t have time, but also you’re perfectly capable of doing all the research yourself? If you don’t like “pages of waffle” then good luck doing your own review of the 1,000 pages of statutes and judgments that we summarised for you in a 2 page memo.

I'm a partner in private practice and I have a lot of sympathy for the comments from in-house lawyers here. We spend a lot of time training our associates how not to do this. Some advice below:

1. Put the conclusion first. You can still include all the analysis below in case your client actually wants all the detail (and so your liability is covered), but it makes it easy for them to opt-out of reading it if they choose.

2. If you are producing an advice notice, a due diligence report etc, include clear numbered headings. That way a client who doesn't care about data protection for this matter can just skip that section. If the doc includes lot of sections and is more than, say, 10 pages long, include a table of contents.

3. If you're producing an issues list:

(a) split it into commercial issues and legal issues (put the commercial issues first);

(b) number the points for ease of reference; and

(c) for any which aren't a pure commercial point (e.g. "what purchase price did you agree"), include your suggested response as well as any relevant context ("this point goes both ways", "this is a house point this counterparty won't drop" etc).

That gives the client the option of (i) saying no need for a call, agree with your proposed responses, other than on point [x] please say [y], (ii) having a call to just run through the points they aren't clear on / want to discuss or (iii) going through all the points if they choose.

4. When you're on a call, start by asking the client how they want to run it ("would you like me to start with a quick summary and then run through my email or do you have particular points you would like to hit first?").

5. Unless it's a document you expect the client to edit, send in PDF rather than word. Easier to read on a phone / tablet.

I am amazed how many experienced lawyers think they are above the "little things" because they consider themselves such incredible technical lawyers. Quick insight - you're supposed to be a good technical lawyer, it's a bare minimum standard not a badge of honour, and the vast majority of queries are not novel points of law that require a once in a generation legal talent (and those that are typically involve going to counsel anyway). If you're in private practice and think you're too good to worry about client service, you're in the wrong profession.

Also, all the in-house bashing is just childish. There are tonnes of reasons to move in house that have nothing to do with ability as a lawyer (better work life / balance, you like advising but don't like the BD / politicking side of partnership, you have childcare / caring responsibilities which aren't consistent with being available 24/7, you're bored of being a subject matter expert in your particular area, you moved cities and the in-house roles are better of better quality than local private practice roles (would you rather work at Rolls Royce or in private practice in Derby), you need a period in-house for credibility (true for lots of reg / competition lawyers, where its good to spend time at the relevant regulator), etc).

In my opinion too many private practice lawyers make the logical leap of:

I know more than you about my practice area ---> I know more than you about the law / everything

Clear, concise advice can be provided by Robot Lawyers using AI.

Anon 16 June 23 09:54 "In-house lawyers are so third rate. They spend their days leafing through Legal 500, deciding who they will delegate their work to."

Exquisite trolling, obviously someone who has never worked in-house. 

Clearly a lot of resentment on this page about being accused of waffling. I don't think the view that "memos are waffly" is representative of the whole in-house profession. Most of us understand that you have to cover all bases and that clients can turn into worst enemies. 

I would say "waffling" is much worse in the context of meetings and client calls where some lawyers obviously try and eke out the the clock with points that are not applicable. It really doesn't go down well with non-lawyer executives and is a quick way to lose business. Free advice, take it or leave it.

Depends on the in house role just as it depends on the private practice role.  In house lawyers also include GCs / heads of Risk / Legal etc who at large law firms, other prof services firms  and banks earn similar amounts to partners whilst doing more varied work.   They are hardly “third rate”.   And most in house lawyers come from private practice anyway.  

Lmao at all these solicitors (i.e., glorified insurance policies) running their mouths and pretending that they know the law.

In reality, whenever a big boy lawyer at [insert your "prestigious" City law firm here] encounters an issue that requires skills beyond reading through PLC articles, a barrister will have to pick up their phone.

You know I'm right, and I know it hurts.

Real lawyer 16 June 23 14:25: true. Solicitors are post boxes for counsel.

"We don't have time to decipher pages and pages of waffle with a concluding paragraph that fails to provide a definite course of action, leaving it up to us to decide,"

Translates as:

"I don't have the intellect to understand your advice, please just tell me what to do."

The saltiness of some private practice lawyers on here are vis a vis in-house lawyers reflect why it’s so hard for us to find good external counsel.

I’m at a VC fund and very few private practice lawyers (whether on the investment side or fund structuring side) properly understand how our business works. The ones that do are invaluable to us.

Barnsbury 16 June 23 16:01: spot on. In-house lawyers are useless.

Anonymous 16 June 23 09:28 - I agree with all of this. 

And my criticisms are not levelled at most external counsel.

Chuck all your disclaimers at me, I get it. But put them at the bottom of the email. You may be advising non-lawyers, very likely the case for smaller clients. You have to translate the law, and apply it to the fact pattern with a clear conclusion. This shouldn't be controversial.

My reference to "wearing a bit of negligence risk" is a loose (and I concede, over simplified) reference to the realities of what in-house non-lawyer clients expect of their advisors (their GC or external counsel). They want to be told what to do, and you have to tell them even if you're only 98% sure. Again, caveat. But caveat a firm piece of advice. The whole thing shouldn't be a waffly restatement of the law.

There are many, many good lawyers who do this well. These simply show up the ones that are unable to do this. If you can't provide firm advice, and just like to restate the law, you will never be thought of as true business partner, and you will be replaced by someone who can.

It's like informed consent in the NHS. The patrician doctor used to tell you what he was going to do with you. Now you are told the pros and cons of potential surgery and asked to choose yourself - I guarantee almost every person's response to this is "what would you do if it were you, Doctor?". Write a nice note for your file about how the patient decided for themselves following an explanation of the risks. But please, please, accompany that with a firm answer on the "what would you do" question. That's all people want to know.

For those of us who don't do Corporate Commercial stuff, is "In House" different from "Working From Home"?

Coz, from one way of thinking, I've been a lawyer in my house for the last three years.

I find all this in-houser/PP bitching a bit unsavoury.

I’ve been a solicitor in a top 10 City firm, then a GC for a substantial international business, then a partner in an global law firm, and now back to a GC for a family office. In my experience, there has been gold standard lawyers in both camps but also utterly sh1t lawyers. Out of the two most outstanding lawyers that mentored me in my career, and who I believe were two of the best lawyers in my sector, one was a partner in a MC firm and the other was a global GC. Out of the two crappest lawyers I’ve ever met, one was a “GC” in the loosest sense of the word who one wouldn’t trust with a confi agreement and the other a “senior partner” whose existence and practice was almost entirely based on his imagination. Horses for courses.

A bit of mutual respect from the two branches of the profession wouldn’t go amiss. 

Wow, the saltiness from current PP lawyers In these comments is astonishing…most IH lawyers I know were in PP at MC or US firms for several years and then moved in-house in order to have a life - why would that suddenly make them third rate? It’s just an entirely different type of job, you have to cover a far wider brief than a PP lawyer does and you outsource where it makes sense to do so. I’ve worked with some fantastic PP lawyers and some who have been pretty shocking (even at top firms). Staying in PP is hardly proof of your brilliance any more than moving to IH is proof of mediocrity. You want more money - we want to see our kids at 5pm. Just different priorities.

“Obviously it depends on the size of the issue, but for a lot of small matters "I'd do this, not that, if I were you", is all that we want or need.”

Well take that view then. You have been told what the issues are so what’s stopping you?

What you want is a note from MagicWhiteshoes LLP saying “do X” to hide behind when your boss asks you why you did it. 

Sensible with a very sensible post above indeed, that people would do well to heed. 
But don’t agree with:

”Quick insight - you're supposed to be a good technical lawyer, it's a bare minimum standard not a badge of honour”

It may be that people are supposed to be, but everyone certainly isn’t. You can distinguish yourself by being technically good. The clients worth having will appreciate it. 

Almost all lawyers are useless 

I always thought collaboration, communication and phone hacking were key. 

Its the job of the in house lawyer to take the advice and decide what to do. If the advice is too waffly, find better lawyers or ask better questions.  if you dont set out the parameters within which you expect to be advised, expect the law firm to quite rightly want to cover its ass.  

this strikes me in part of a further push in the direction that no-one wants to read anything these days.  Literally, 5 bullet points is too much for some people who will phone you and basically ask you to read it out - or will read the first point and act on that without reading the rest.  Complicated issues are complicated.  You can't just wave a magic wand and expect a law firm to take business risk for you when you're deciding what to do. 

What law firms should do more of - is give a view on what is market / what they have seen / what they have never seen. if you asn in house lawyer use firms that know what they are doing on the type of deals that you do - that will give you a steer on how to go forward. 

I never understand why in-house counsel don't go directly to the Bar more often.  After all, that is where solicitors will send the difficult points.  And it is generally cheaper on an hourly basis.  Plus, you know your work will be done by the person you instruct rather than delegated to a junior associate.

In-house lawyers want to outsource their risk non-shocka.

She says as someone who has worked in-house for years.  Seriously IH guys, stop whinging that PP isn't doing your job for you.

One of the main reasons an IHL instructs an external advisor is so that they have someone to blame.