Every day at TVN is different. Not a lot of it is spent on practising law, although when that happens, the matters that land on my desk are the most strategic or confidential legal issues. Quite a lot of time is spent on management work with my direct reports. My duties also include monitoring and presenting TVN’s point of view on any legislative initiatives that may impact operations.
Here in Poland a lot of general counsel think that because they are licensed lawyers, they have to act as if they were in private practice. In other words, they take a sign and forget approach: ‘That’s my view, I have drafted a legal opinion, I have covered myself in the legal opinion, and you do what you want.’ That is not acceptable. You have to talk to your senior management team members, understand what they need, tell them what they can do, and if they can’t do it the simple way, find a way that they can do it. It’s an ongoing interaction. An in-house lawyer who just sits and fires away legal opinions is an in-house counsel from 20 years ago. I encourage lawyers in my team to tell internal clients: ‘Please involve the lawyers from day one of your project, because if you come when the project is 60% done, you may find that part of that 60% will have been done the wrong way.’
You need a different mindset to become an in-house counsel in a financial institution compared to an in-house counsel in the media. Financial institutions are much more rigid, much more process-and procedure driven. One could argue that most of the transactions are already done – there are zillions of precedents in terms of documentation and processes. The whole fun of working for the media is that a lot of the products, especially the online products, are new. You have to write the rules yourself.
I completed an MBA because I thought that I would need some additional knowledge to not just be in charge of legal. Right now, I’m also in charge of information security systems, so I’m basically in charge of IT personnel. I sometimes joke that it’s like a civilian being in control of the army! A good MBA will help the in-house counsel understand all business issues, and to understand corporate finance.
To best add value as a general counsel, don’t think of yourself as a controller, but as a service provider. Do the small tasks quickly, even if you have to interrupt working on the bigger issues. Talk to your internal clients – you will understand the problem better from one conversation rather than ten emails. Give advice that something cannot be done only when there really is no solution.
The most important thing that an in-house lawyer has to understand is that full compliance will not always be the ultimate goal. A business takes all sorts of manageable risks, and the in-house counsel has to learn that there will also be manageable legal risks. The answer ‘it’s not in accordance with the law’ sometimes will not be acceptable. The answer that will definitely be acceptable is: ‘It poses too high a legal risk.’