Inhouse legal team of the year: Difference between revisions

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{{a|people|}}To bring some rigour to the annual [[Awards]] season, the [[JC]] is pleased to announce the judging criteria for [[inhouse legal team of the year]] award.
{{a|people|{{image|Legal awards|png|Just a golden envelope away}}}}To bring some rigour to the annual [[Awards]] season, and short of some kind of centralised hunger games whereby different inhouse legal teams gather to duel, or compete to the death in a [[tedium]]-endurance heptathlon — the [[JC]] today publishes standardised criteria by which judging panels — who plainly have no clue otherwise — may assess finalists for [[inhouse legal team of the year]] [[Awards|award]]s.


*'''Timeliness of instructions''': How reliably close you can get to the magical Friday, 6pm deadline before dropping a “drafts required by open of business tomorrow” instruction on your external advisors;
As any experienced [[inhouse lawyer]] will tell you, the following are the core skills:
*'''Inexplicable delay''': How long you can leave a draft whose immediate turnaround you signalled was as a matter of life and death, and which necessitated your legal team rearranging plans for the theatre, wedding anniversaries and so on, before deigning to so much as look at it.
*'''Can I speak to a partner please?''': The disdain with you regard junior members of the external team should they try to answer your elementary questions about the draft they spent sixteen hours preparing;
*'''[[Red-herring ninja]]dom''': How comprehensive and particular is your knowledge of the punctuation, typography, weight and leading of your employer’s legal name wherever it appears in a prospectus?
*'''Mark-up pedantry''': Beyond the inherent pedantry of the [[red-herring ninja]], how brazenly superficial are your amendments to your counsel’s perfectly sound legal drafting?
*'''Throw the associate under the bus''': How shamelessly will you blame the most junior member of outside counsel team — the same one whose name you keep forgetting and whose legal assurances count for nothing in the “can I speak to a partner please” category — for neglecting to prepare and circulate “critical legal documentation” that has, in fact, been in your inbox since 4.30 am on the Saturday morning immediately following your request for it.


*'''Timeliness of brief''': After an indolent day spent in [[Continuing professional development|CPD seminars]] and [[panel discussions]], how reliably can you hit the magical [[6 p.m.]] deadline for dropping a “drafts required by open of business tomorrow so help me” instruction on [[Private practice lawyer|external advisors]]?
*'''Inexplicable delay''': For how many weeks can you leave the aforementioned drafts — whose immediate turnaround you expressed to be a matter of life and death, and for whose production the [[Private practice lawyer|external team]] rearranged long-standing plans to attend the theatre, celebrate wedding anniversaries and so on — before deigning to look at them?
*'''Yes, but can I speak to a partner please?''' How disdainful can you be to the [[Private practice lawyer|junior-most lawyer on the external team]] should {{sex|she}} try to answer your uninformed questions about a document {{sex|she}} has just spent sixteen hours preparing?
*'''[[Red-herring ninja]]dom''': How comprehensive is your knowledge of the punctuation, typography, weight, kerning, leading and style of the firm’s legal name wherever it appears in a [[prospectus]]?
*'''[[Mark-up]] [[pedantry]]/ambiguity''': Beyond the inherent pedantry of the [[red-herring ninja]], how brazenly superficial are your amendments to perfectly sound legal drafting? Points available for:
:*refusing to hear of modifications to your comments notwithstanding their illegibility, incomprehensibility or irrelevance;<ref>{{Bold full stop}}</ref>
:*how rigorously you [[mark-up]] closing agendas, bible tables of content and [[process agent]] appointment letters, relative to your substantive input — [[if any]] — on the deal documentation;
:*the ''inscrutability'' of your [[mark-up]]: a question mark, exclamation point or other cryptic glyph, annotated airily in a margin, ''apropos'' nothing but just hovering there, transcendent, above the fray, exuding other-worldly wisdom without giving anything away, leaving [[Private practice lawyer|external counsel]] the task of extracting meaning from it and converting that into a positive textual amendment, over which you then have a free option: if it turns out to be brilliant, you can take all credit; if it is not, you can ...
*'''Throw the associate under the bus''': How shamelessly will you blame the most [[Private practice lawyer|junior member of outside counsel team]] — the one whose name you keep forgetting and whose thoughtful explanations count for nothing in the “yes, but can I speak to a partner please” category — for neglecting to prepare and circulate “critical legal documentation” that has, in fact, been in your inbox since 4.30 a.m. on the Saturday morning immediately following your [[6 p.m.]] request for it?
*'''External law-firm management''': How insistent are you in requiring any external spend over £2,500 to go through a mandatory three-way bidding process?


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*[[Inhouse cousel]]
*[[Inhouse counsel]]
*[[Awards]]
*[[Awards]]
{{ref}}