Inhouse legal team of the year: Difference between revisions

{{a|people|[[File:Legal awards.png|450px|thumb|center|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 in multi-disciplinary professional decathlon of [[tedium]] endurance events — the [[JC]] today publishes some 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.

As any experienced [[inhouse lawyer]] will tell you, the following are the core skills:

*'''Timeliness of brief''': After an indolent day of [[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 drafts — whose immediate turnaround was expressed to be a matter of life and death and, to accommodate which, the [[Private practice lawyer|external team]] rearranged long-standing plans for the theatre, to 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|he}} has just spent sixteen hours preparing?

*'''[[Red-herring ninja]]dom''': How comprehensive is your knowledge of the punctuation, typography, weight, leading and style of the firm’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 perfectly sound legal drafting? Additional points for:

:*refusing to hear of modifications to your drafting notwithstanding its incomprehensibility;<ref>{{Bold full stop}}</ref>

:*extensive markups of closing agendas, bible tables of content and [[process agent]] appointment letters, relative to substantive comments on deal documentation;

*'''Throw the associate under the bus''': How shamelessly will you blame the most [[Private practice lawyer|junior member of outside counsel team]] — the same one whose name you keep forgetting and whose explanations 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 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?