Who's Leading Who? Why In-House Counsel Should Proactively Manage Outside Counsel and Vendor Relationships

If you've ever taken ballroom dance lessons or watched Dancing with the Stars, you may know that each dancer in a pair has a respective assigned role: leader or follower.

The leader initiates movement with confidence and decisiveness, and the follower responds accordingly. Together, the dancers ideally move in sync, with elegance and grace.

Without a strong leader, the results are disappointing. The dancers may go through the motions, but they achieve far less than what's possible.

In corporate intellectual property and legal departments, a different kind of "dance" is ever present--the interactions between (a) in-house counsel and (b) their outside counsel, solutions and services providers, and other vendors.

Over the years, I've observed that in-house "dancers" fall into one of two distinct categories: leaders and followers.

The Followers

Corporate attorney "followers" tend to view outside counsel and other external relationships in transactional terms. As such:

• They may focus almost exclusively on assigned project work, to the exclusion of building relationships and optimizing value, costs, and service delivery. This focus may breed a set-and-forget, conventional approach to their management of outside providers.

• They may act passively or passive-aggressively when displeased with an external provider, rather than directly broaching issues of concern and attempting to seek changes and improvements. Consequently, unaddressed concerns may become major grievances. Resentments may intensify.

• They may not actively assess, reassess, coach, and (if necessary) fire underperforming providers.

Overall, the followers don't see it as their role to drive the highest performance of their outside counsel and other vendors.

The Leaders

In marked contrast, corporate attorney "leaders" take a holistic, relationship-centric approach when teaming up with external providers. They set high expectations and give providers a chance to rise to the occasion.

They're highly collaborative, looking for the win-win for their company and the provider.

And they don't hesitate to make changes when a provider fails to deliver and is incapable of, or resistant to, rehabilitation.

In sum, the leaders proactively drive performance of external providers to yield the highest performance possible and a highly optimized provider ecosystem.

Quartal IP Offers "Dance" Lessons

Corporate IP and legal professionals who are followers, but are open to feedback and growth, certainly can become leaders, thus delivering greater impacts to their internal clients, enterprises, and shareholders.

Quartal IP can help you achieve such a transformation.

Our services suite for companies includes strategic advisory services, group training sessions, and one-on-one coaching directed to managing and strengthening outside counsel and IP service provider relationships.

Please contact us if you'd like to schedule a consultation to discuss.