Why do many business people express frustration with attorneys? Because as Mark McCormack has famously written, most attorneys don't understand business. That includes business lawyers.
Attorneys Are From Mars, Executives Are From Venus
Many business lawyers, including in-house counsel, will privately admit they don't understand the intricacies of business, especially strategy and management. This is because managers and attorneys speak different languages.
Managers think in terms of getting things done. Their tools are strategy and organizational management. They also leverage finance, accounting, marketing, and operations to achieve their objectives.
In contrast, lawyers -- including business lawyers -- think like lawyers. That is what law professors teach law students to do. To succeed in law school and as a new associate requires thinking like a lawyer. This means spotting issues and fly specking documents. (I first heard the term "fly specking" from constitutional law scholar Roderick Hills, Jr. as a first year student at University of Michigan Law School. Hills is now at NYU School of Law). The unfortunate result of this orientation is that attorneys often fail to advance business priorities because they focus on legal details and how to minimize legal risk.
Certainly some attorneys are strategic, but they provide legal strategy. They advise on how to negotiate contract or transactional terms, or on litigation strategy. They suggest how legal decisions might affect their client's business. But they rarely advise on business strategy and management practice. Nor do they typically advise on how to integrate business and legal.
In future posts, I will discuss how Legally Informed Strategy provides a solution to this problem.
Have you felt that your lawyer does not adequately understand the important business issues?
Twitter: @DougYPark
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