On Giving Advice: Maximizing Value for Your Client

Abstract

The practice of law is a service. Yet few in-house lawyers are assessed on the quality of their service and fewer still actually inquire about it. After nearly a decade serving as the general counsel of a national building materials and service provider, I was asked to move into a chief operating officer role. During that process, I had an exhilarating learning curve in my new role but also questioned whether I would have been a more effective general counsel if I had spent more timing “walking in my client’s shoes” so that I could service them better.