Team size: Nine

What would you say are the unique qualities required to be successful as an in-house lawyer in your industry?

The first thing that strikes you about working as a lawyer in retail is that it is fast paced. There is always more work than you can do at any one point in time, and you need to be able to prioritise those matters that are most important as well as having good resilience and not being overwhelmed by the volume of work. The usual “must haves” also apply. You need good technical skills, attention to detail and a good work ethic.

You also need to be able to solve the businesses problems rather than just provide legal advice to the business. In this respect, it should be easy for the client to read your advice and be told the answer rather than having to apply the legal analysis to the facts and reach their own conclusion. Similarly, your analysis needs to balance the legal and commercial considerations (in addition potentially to reputational and political or regulatory risks).

Our job is to help the business achieve its commercial objectives, not just minimise risk. Increasingly, it is more and more important to critically analyse the advice you get from external lawyers. Often it can be too conservative or aggressive (or simply plain wrong) and so it is important to be able to filter that advice to the business and give your take on it rather than just passing the advice on. Bouncing complex problems off other lawyers in the team is also essential, the old adage two heads are better than one remains true.

Most lawyers start off being the expert in a particular field but as they gain more experience, what is more important is the ability to ask the right questions. I cannot tell you the number of times that asking just one more question has meant the difference to achieving the best outcome.

Having an interest in the business and how it works is essential, both to the outcomes you produce as well as your enjoyment of the role. This also goes to developing your commercial acumen which is essential as you progress in an organisation. Being good with people is also important. You do not have to be their best friend, but you do need to establish a good working relationship. There will be times when you need to give them bad news or tell them they cannot do something or there simply is not a solution to the problem and in those moments, it helps that they know you and that you have done your best.

Finally, I always think it takes at least a year in your role to be really valuable to the business. This is because after this time you start to anticipate where a matter is going and can then work out how to nip it in the bud or best deal with it.

Looking through this there is not much here that is not applicable to other roles but if you can tick most of these boxes then you are well on the way to succeeding in any legal role.