In the running of a business, legal challenges that may arise include managing contracts, compliance with laws and providing on-demand legal advice for day to day legal challenges. Engaging the services of external legal counsel can help meet these challenges more especially for businesses without an in house legal team. How can one effectively collaborate with external legal counsel?
Evaluation
Make an assessment to determine whether a matter requires outside or in-house legal counsel, if one exists. If there is no in-house legal counsel, the wise thing to do is to engage external legal counsel for all your legal needs.
Factors to consider include (best practices):
- The capacity of your internal legal team – An assessment in terms of whether your team has the capacity and resources to meet all deadlines for legal matters within your business. The assessment will determine if there is a need for outsourcing certain legal tasks to outside legal counsel.
- Complexity of matters – Does your internal legal team have expertise to deal with complex matters? Does your team have the requisite knowledge, skills and experience to negotiate complex matters? Look at your internal legal team and identify the gaps. This will help you decide whether external legal counsel is required for your business.
Policy formulation
You will need to develop an outside counsel policy guideline. The policy should clearly define the goals of your internal legal team, the objectives, expectations, costs, reporting, performance monitoring, reviews and disputes, amongst other factors.
By implementing best practices, internal legal teams can collaborate with external legal counsel to manage workflows, ensure efficiencies and cater for the best interests of a business. If you are looking to engage with outside legal counsel, please feel free to contact us.
Article written by Hazel Moshidi
The content of this article is for general information purposes only.
