Communications Problems and Solutions

1. Too Little Messaging by the General Counsel of Key Themes

General counsel need to repeat key themes many times with the same message, somewhat like politicians and their well-polished stump speeches. Whatever is believed to be vital ' responsiveness, risk management, proactivity, teamwork ' the general counsel must say it, explain it and beat the drums for it over and over. Listeners hear messages at different times, need different modes and reinforcement of the messages and interpret them individually, and leaders learn you can never emphasize too much what is most worth telling. An e-mail alone won't do; wise words spoken once from the podium will fall short. General counsel may forget this imperative or tire of sounding like a broken record, but they must remember to say it often and then do so again tomorrow.

Aside from the constant chorus, one of the solutions to this problem is an open door. If members of the department feel they can speak to the top, then the tumor of poor communication goes into remission. With a different approach, the general counsel of Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Reebok International Ltd. once published statements of principals that laid out with some specificity their core beliefs. Another technique is to have the general counsel host periodic breakfasts or lunches with a cross-section of the department. The meals serve as forums for emphasizing key messages. And, despite the huge importance of repeated statements, the GC must listen carefully and ask questions to learn whether the points have gotten through. What the GC stresses will be less effective if she is isolated or only learns sugar-coated versions of what people understand. And, always and above all, actions speak louder than words.

2. Little Disclosure of Staff Group Discussions

When a law department is large enough to have a senior legal team that reports directly to the top lawyer and meets periodically, the rest of the department wants to know what goes on behind closed doors. Much of what is discussed in the weekly or bi-weekly sessions may be mundane, such as the schedule for the lawyer offsite or who will report on a high-potential lawyer, but those in the law department who are not privy to what they imagine to be portentous deliberations yearn to know more. Rumors abound where silence resounds.

The way to reduce speculation and improve morale is to spread the word as much as possible. One way to promote this openness is to publish the meeting agendas. An insurance company for which I consulted sent monthly newsletters in hard copy, and a pharmaceutical company distributed one by e-mail, portions of which opened the door on the senior legal team's deliberations. Or perhaps each staff meeting could appoint a scribe who would summarize the discussions that could be disclosed, somewhat like minutes of the Federal Reserve Board that are released later. It would help simply to have a creed that everything in staff meetings is disclosable unless expressly restricted and that disclosure is encouraged. The general counsel should remind reports to get the highlights out, and they will trickle down.

3. Secrecy and Confusion About Administrative Processes

A third communication challenge that smolders in many law departments comes from too little administrative transparency. For instance, everyone in law departments wants to understand what it takes to be promoted. They want to know how compensation is set and where they stand relatively on bonuses. Who gets a new title? Is the reduction in force finally done? How are cubicles assigned? Not every decision, they hope, is subjective or based on favoritism. Partly, they want to feel that processes work fairly and consistently. Partly, they want to feel that outcomes are deserved. Often this kind of information, unlike substantive legal information, applies generally throughout the law department. Think of it as administrative communication and appreciate that it is uniformly felt to be extremely important.

As for partial solutions, posted process rules and guidelines, such as career path expectations, do the most
to assuage the desire to be treated fairly ' assuming the department's managers honor them. Another technique is candor in evaluations, but the problem is that evaluations generally occur only once a year if at all. Much about morale and engagement in law departments pivots on the degree that people feel they are in the know about operational decisions and respected by being told what is happening on time and completely. Policies and guidelines codify communication and ease the burden of one-off explanations to the discontented. Some departments post information on intranet sites while others use collaboration tools such as wikis. Even old-fashioned bulletin boards can help satiate people's craving to know what is happening and why. Perceived equity and fairness are the tests of transparency. Stated differently, decent explanations of procedures dampen gossip and discontent.

4. Silos As Barriers to Communication

Clumps of mostly autonomous groups in law departments create another familiar communication challenge. Lawyers dedicated to support of the apple unit don't talk to the orange unit's lawyers; mergers and acquisitions specialists won't deal with the patent group. The barriers don't amount to Montagues versus Capulets. But the lawyers who support a particular business unit probably feel no inclination to let others know what is happening in their domain. To be fair, much of the time, the work they do and what they learn and produce has relatively little bearing on others in the law department. But some information has consequences outside the stovepipe. Even if what's worked on and created has no practical use, people like to know what's up on the other side of the fence. Morale and collegiality build as communications boundaries give way.

One solution to the silence of the silos is practice groups, sometimes called communities of practice, that bring together lawyers and others who share similar problems. Anti-money laundering, to pick one from the financial industry, has become pervasive and lends itself to pooled efforts. Or project teams mix together representatives from across functions, such as to choose a matter management system or wade through Dodd-Frank. Both provide a way to make more porous the information barriers that otherwise exist. Physical locations of offices can improve cross-unit communication or impede it. E-mail messages have become the preferred mode of communication but in their flood, plus the tributaries flowing in chats and texts, much can get lost. Nothing beats talking, especially in person.

5. Hoarding Practice Knowledge

Communication about work product and learning is knowledge management in a different guise. What is codified, stored in directories, indexed or otherwise made available to others becomes memorialized communication. We all know about the proverbial wheel, but that doesn't make us eager to share our learning. This field of communication ' knowledge management ' has many land mines, but law departments keep charging ahead with expertise databases, circulated material, post-mortems, shared directories with naming conventions, document management systems, webinars, brown-bag lunches, group e-mail lists, CLE teams, knowledge analysts and other efforts to corral and disseminate knowledge.

Let's summarize in positive terms the aspirations of a law department that wants to become communicatively advanced. Its general counsel spreads the word clearly and frequently; it opens the books on meetings of the direct reports; it clarifies administrative rules; its lawyers share what's happening; and its legal learning accumulates and flows freely. It's easy for those in the know to overestimate what others understand or to feel powerful in the restriction of information. Both mistakes are pernicious. Effective communication being as crucial as it is, all law departments should give thought to their own flows and how to improve them.

Rees W. Morrison, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, was for more than two decades a management adviser to general counsel. He founded General Counsel Metrics (GCM), which offers a benchmark report of law departments, likely exceeding 1,000 legal departments in 2011. This article also appeared in The National Law Journal, an ALM sibling publication of this newsletter.

Communication ' the life blood of law departments, but at times a hemorrhage of complaints. Who is told what and when makes a big difference to the effectiveness of a law department. This article describes a handful of the communication complaints that law departments often encounter, and offers some ways to address them.

Before starting, note some broader points. Each of these communication challenges looms more significantly as law departments become larger, and even more so as they become geographically dispersed. Aside from structural aspects, how well information flows goes beyond up and down the ladder of authority; communication across levels deserves recognition. For example, paralegals and administrative assistants ought to exchange information, as they chronically feel left out. As will be seen, the tools that enable communication within the department run the gamut. Meetings always serve a good communicative purpose.

And one more note: This article does not address communication with clients, which may well be even more fundamental than communication within the law department. There are similarities, to be sure, between inward and outward flows of information. Getting the word out accurately, timely and sufficiently benefits both the law department and its corporate clients. Good management means good communication.

1. Too Little Messaging by the General Counsel of Key Themes

General counsel need to repeat key themes many times with the same message, somewhat like politicians and their well-polished stump speeches. Whatever is believed to be vital ' responsiveness, risk management, proactivity, teamwork ' the general counsel must say it, explain it and beat the drums for it over and over. Listeners hear messages at different times, need different modes and reinforcement of the messages and interpret them individually, and leaders learn you can never emphasize too much what is most worth telling. An e-mail alone won't do; wise words spoken once from the podium will fall short. General counsel may forget this imperative or tire of sounding like a broken record, but they must remember to say it often and then do so again tomorrow.

Aside from the constant chorus, one of the solutions to this problem is an open door. If members of the department feel they can speak to the top, then the tumor of poor communication goes into remission. With a different approach, the general counsel of Westinghouse Electric Corp. and Reebok International Ltd. once published statements of principals that laid out with some specificity their core beliefs. Another technique is to have the general counsel host periodic breakfasts or lunches with a cross-section of the department. The meals serve as forums for emphasizing key messages. And, despite the huge importance of repeated statements, the GC must listen carefully and ask questions to learn whether the points have gotten through. What the GC stresses will be less effective if she is isolated or only learns sugar-coated versions of what people understand. And, always and above all, actions speak louder than words.

2. Little Disclosure of Staff Group Discussions

When a law department is large enough to have a senior legal team that reports directly to the top lawyer and meets periodically, the rest of the department wants to know what goes on behind closed doors. Much of what is discussed in the weekly or bi-weekly sessions may be mundane, such as the schedule for the lawyer offsite or who will report on a high-potential lawyer, but those in the law department who are not privy to what they imagine to be portentous deliberations yearn to know more. Rumors abound where silence resounds.

The way to reduce speculation and improve morale is to spread the word as much as possible. One way to promote this openness is to publish the meeting agendas. An insurance company for which I consulted sent monthly newsletters in hard copy, and a pharmaceutical company distributed one by e-mail, portions of which opened the door on the senior legal team's deliberations. Or perhaps each staff meeting could appoint a scribe who would summarize the discussions that could be disclosed, somewhat like minutes of the Federal Reserve Board that are released later. It would help simply to have a creed that everything in staff meetings is disclosable unless expressly restricted and that disclosure is encouraged. The general counsel should remind reports to get the highlights out, and they will trickle down.

3. Secrecy and Confusion About Administrative Processes

A third communication challenge that smolders in many law departments comes from too little administrative transparency. For instance, everyone in law departments wants to understand what it takes to be promoted. They want to know how compensation is set and where they stand relatively on bonuses. Who gets a new title? Is the reduction in force finally done? How are cubicles assigned? Not every decision, they hope, is subjective or based on favoritism. Partly, they want to feel that processes work fairly and consistently. Partly, they want to feel that outcomes are deserved. Often this kind of information, unlike substantive legal information, applies generally throughout the law department. Think of it as administrative communication and appreciate that it is uniformly felt to be extremely important.

As for partial solutions, posted process rules and guidelines, such as career path expectations, do the most
to assuage the desire to be treated fairly ' assuming the department's managers honor them. Another technique is candor in evaluations, but the problem is that evaluations generally occur only once a year if at all. Much about morale and engagement in law departments pivots on the degree that people feel they are in the know about operational decisions and respected by being told what is happening on time and completely. Policies and guidelines codify communication and ease the burden of one-off explanations to the discontented. Some departments post information on intranet sites while others use collaboration tools such as wikis. Even old-fashioned bulletin boards can help satiate people's craving to know what is happening and why. Perceived equity and fairness are the tests of transparency. Stated differently, decent explanations of procedures dampen gossip and discontent.

4. Silos As Barriers to Communication

Clumps of mostly autonomous groups in law departments create another familiar communication challenge. Lawyers dedicated to support of the apple unit don't talk to the orange unit's lawyers; mergers and acquisitions specialists won't deal with the patent group. The barriers don't amount to Montagues versus Capulets. But the lawyers who support a particular business unit probably feel no inclination to let others know what is happening in their domain. To be fair, much of the time, the work they do and what they learn and produce has relatively little bearing on others in the law department. But some information has consequences outside the stovepipe. Even if what's worked on and created has no practical use, people like to know what's up on the other side of the fence. Morale and collegiality build as communications boundaries give way.

One solution to the silence of the silos is practice groups, sometimes called communities of practice, that bring together lawyers and others who share similar problems. Anti-money laundering, to pick one from the financial industry, has become pervasive and lends itself to pooled efforts. Or project teams mix together representatives from across functions, such as to choose a matter management system or wade through Dodd-Frank. Both provide a way to make more porous the information barriers that otherwise exist. Physical locations of offices can improve cross-unit communication or impede it. E-mail messages have become the preferred mode of communication but in their flood, plus the tributaries flowing in chats and texts, much can get lost. Nothing beats talking, especially in person.

5. Hoarding Practice Knowledge

Communication about work product and learning is knowledge management in a different guise. What is codified, stored in directories, indexed or otherwise made available to others becomes memorialized communication. We all know about the proverbial wheel, but that doesn't make us eager to share our learning. This field of communication ' knowledge management ' has many land mines, but law departments keep charging ahead with expertise databases, circulated material, post-mortems, shared directories with naming conventions, document management systems, webinars, brown-bag lunches, group e-mail lists, CLE teams, knowledge analysts and other efforts to corral and disseminate knowledge.

Let's summarize in positive terms the aspirations of a law department that wants to become communicatively advanced. Its general counsel spreads the word clearly and frequently; it opens the books on meetings of the direct reports; it clarifies administrative rules; its lawyers share what's happening; and its legal learning accumulates and flows freely. It's easy for those in the know to overestimate what others understand or to feel powerful in the restriction of information. Both mistakes are pernicious. Effective communication being as crucial as it is, all law departments should give thought to their own flows and how to improve them.

Rees W. Morrison, a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors, was for more than two decades a management adviser to general counsel. He founded General Counsel Metrics (GCM), which offers a benchmark report of law departments, likely exceeding 1,000 legal departments in 2011. This article also appeared in The National Law Journal, an ALM sibling publication of this newsletter.