New Comm Biz

Many of us live by the mantra “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.” This is true of many things until you expose your company to legal risk. Then you’re in for a world of hurt.

Corporate lawyers frustrate communicators. They are overly conservative and risk averse. They never let us have any fun.

Thanks to @JeremyMeyers I found this post this morning on communicating with lawyers at work posted by Robert Holland. This is a very timely topic as most companies who haven’t entered the social space feel held back by their lawyers.
The Secret to Working with Lawyers « Communication at Work

I’ve especially found this to be the case with my client. At first, our team and the Legal department had a fairly typical communicator-lawyer relationship. Then, we invited our function’s lawyer to our weekly meeting so that we could understand the kinds of things that cause Legal’s hearts to skip beats. We learned a lot about the laws and regulations governing the industry and about corporate separateness for an entity that owns several companies.

From my time working in/with Corporate America I can attest to the value of bringing your lawyers into the process. There are three reasons lawyers say no so much (and they’re all related):

• You’re about to do or say something that could get your company in serious trouble.
• They don’t understand your strategy or why something is important.
• You’re asking the wrong question.

Just existing opens up companies to litigation. Anyone can sue your company for any reason. A lawyers job is to ensure that your company has a reasonable chance at defending itself against that litigation. Excluding criminal activity (at least in theory) there isn’t anything you can’t do, it’s just a matter of degrees.

The first thing to do is to bring your lawyers into the process earlier than later. Lawyers hate it when people come to them with insanely close deadlines and an ill-formed plan. More likely than not they are going to say no, just to be safe. An additional benefit in bringing your lawyers into the process is that they than become vested in the process and want to see it succeed and are more likely to work with you.

The most effective tool I’ve learned in working with lawyers is to explain to them what your trying to do and why and then ask them “How can I do this?” Avoid asking, “Can I do this?” Lawyers usually have a very focused way of looking at things (kind of like accountants and programmers) and the answer is often going to be “No.” They may say no because of one small part of your plan that isn’t significant in your strategy. If you instead asked how you could do it and discus through the options you’d be surprised what lawyers will let you do

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