Photo: Judith McKay, Bindu Cudjoe
In-house counsel must shift from being perceived as the “Department of No” to a trusted strategic advisor. That is the most significant message that Bindu Cudjoe and Judith McKay delivered in a wide-ranging discussion on the CL Talk podcast about the evolving role of general counsel.
Cudjoe is the strategic advisor of Bindustries Consulting and a former executive and chief legal officer in the financial services industry, including Laurentian Bank and BMO, as well as a former law firm partner. Judith McKay is the principal and strategic advisor of JEM3 Consulting, a former chief client and innovation officer at McCarthy Tetrault and global general counsel for a Fortune 500 company.
Below is a summary of the conversation:
For Bindu Cudjoe, the key to success for in-house lawyers is curiosity, relationship-building, and early involvement in business decisions. This often means changing how you are perceived.
“I think the way you transition is by how you appear and how you show up as a colleague… that you're curious, that you're enthusiastic for the things that the organization wants to do,” Cudjoe says. “Striving to do that, you're deeply involved, as in curious and participating in those activities… whether it's formal strategic planning or simply being engaged in… your weekly, bi-weekly, monthly conversations with your peers by establishing relationships and getting to know them.”
Judith McKay agrees, suggesting that legal departments need a rebrand. She suggests a change that may not be realistic – but indicates the required mindset change. A legal department could rename itself “the solutions department,” she says. “Because often… the perception is, I go to legal because I’m in trouble… So it's viewed as kind of a negative and a bit scary.” Instead, she argues that in-house teams should clarify that legal is a partner in growth, not an obstacle.
Both agree that a significant way to shift this perception is to ensure that in-house counsel are present in conversations before legal issues arise. Cudjoe stresses that trust is the foundation of early involvement. “Trust starts in lots of different ways. It starts from being there, even when there isn’t an emergency… Being a cool head, being a compassionate person, being empathetic, that this might be the first time you’re going through this, or we’re going through this, but we’ll figure it out together,” she says.
That presence, she notes, isn’t about lurking around waiting for problems but about participating in business meetings. “I always like to… talk to my business peers and say, tell me what standing meetings you have. And can I just come? Can I come and listen in and hear what you’re talking about? I do not need… a slot in the agenda. I do not need to chime in. I don’t need to read anybody the riot act. I just want to hear how you’re talking about the challenges that you have or the aspirations that you have.”
McKay agrees, adding that being in the room early allows for more flexibility in problem-solving. “If you’re in the mix… you have a lot of relationships in the business; you know what’s going on. So you know when there’s a new initiative, and it’s going to be launched,” she says. “If they seem hesitant, say, ‘Look, here’s the reason I want to be there. The earlier I get in, the more I can help you, the more degrees of freedom we have… and we can steer things towards the high reward, low risk.’”
This approach becomes even more critical for general counsel working in highly regulated industries like financial services. Cudjoe notes that legal teams are often dealing with ambiguity. “The key thing with ambiguous situations is [that] probably nobody has the answer. And as much as lawyers… feel like we’re supposed to have the answers, and perhaps our colleagues… might hope we have the answers too, we don’t always have them,” she says. “And I think having the humility to acknowledge that, gee, I’m not sure I haven’t been here before either, but… let’s think about this from… a multi-stakeholder perspective.”
McKay reinforces this, pointing out that legal teams have a unique ability to see the bigger picture. “Legal has a bird’s eye view that no other function in the organization has,” she says. “Not a single business unit, not any other function, because of the nature of the work.” This perspective, she adds, allows legal teams to scenario-plan effectively, balancing worst-case and best-case outcomes to steer the business in a pragmatic direction.
When working with external law firms, Cudjoe is candid about what they do well – and where they often fall short. “We don’t necessarily need you to have every single answer. We need you to come along the journey with us, to be curious, to have humility, to problem solve with us, to help us through difficult things, and to keep pace with the… way business works, which is often very fast,” she says.
However, she argues that the billable hour is one of the most significant barriers to relationship-building with external firms. “Sometimes when there’s such a fear that every minute spent with external counsel is going to cost X, Y, and Z, or it’s going to be followed by an invoice right after, it becomes a little harder to… want to spend the real-time that’s necessary to build relationships and to build trust.”
McKay agrees and suggests that firms rethink their billing models to encourage deeper engagement. “The billable hour really gets in the way of relationship building if you feel you always have to be on the clock,” she says. “So, I think looking at… building the relationship and deepening the relationship as an investment and… looking at the ways… billable hours aren’t the only way to charge.”
Another challenge for external firms is ensuring their marketing efforts are genuinely relevant to in-house counsel. McKay argues that firms often overwhelm clients with too technical or too broad content. “We love the law; we’re lawyers. We find it fascinating. But the client’s like, ‘Okay, this is a lot, and I don’t have a lot of time, and how is this relevant to me?’” she says. “It’s always keeping in mind, what do clients need to know? Why do they need to know it? And what do they need to do about it?”
Cudjoe adds that law firms have an advantage they often fail to leverage: market intelligence. “You have a ton of market intelligence because, by virtue of the practices that you have, you deal with lots of clients who are often thinking about these very issues in the same way,” she says. “Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything overly proprietary about saying, ‘You know what? Every other bank in your space has been reaching out to us about X, Y, and Z.’”
Ultimately, Cudjoe and McKay agree that trust, humility, and a collaborative mindset make in-house counsel indispensable to their business partners and allow external firms to become authentic allies rather than just service providers.
This conversation can also be found here:
The episode can also be found on our CL Talk podcast homepage, which includes links to follow CL Talk on all the major podcast providers.