How do you know when the right time has arrived to hire your first in-house counsel for your company? The answer may be more straightforward than you thought.
Understanding Costs
Just because a company hires legal counsel to work on day-to-day stuff, does not mean they will have eliminated all their legal costs. In fact, many say that most of the legal costs still remain; they just cut down on the daily legal stuff that was once done by outside forces. It is not necessarily a good idea to hire an in-house counsel just because the cost of hiring outside lawyers has reached the same level as hiring someone to work on the inside. They should wait until the costs have grown a lot higher than that.
What Type of Lawyer to Hire
In order to make it a worthwhile pursuit to hire an in-house counsel one ought to at least know the person they are hiring has quality education and experience backing them up. This means looking for someone who has practiced at a well-known firm or at least someone who has made a name for themselves by winning some important cases and doing solid work for those they have worked for in the past.
You are hiring someone to represent the legal face of your company when you hire an in-house counsel. Make sure the person you bring on is someone you personally respect and that those in the outside world also look up to.
What Areas of Law Should They Know?
To be useful to those who hire them, in-house counsels should have knowledge in many areas of the law that are directly related to what businesses do. This means that they should have a background in corporate law, as well as tax law, regulatory compliance, and employment law. They should basically know the ins and outs of the things that could directly impact your business. If they cannot get a grip on these very basic things, then they are not really worth hiring in the first place.
All companies must weigh a variety of factors to determine when is the right time to make any decision. With this decision, there are a number of factors but each one is pretty simple when it comes down to it. It is mostly just a question of numbers and the abilities of the potential hire for the role of in-house counsel.
Author Information: Eileen O’Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check her out on Twitter at @eileenoshanassy.
