When talking about successful companies most people tend to focus on their products, marketing strategies, corporate culture, or business models and single them out as the main contributors to their current status.
The truth, however, is that successful organizations are shaped by countless forces, most of which operate completely removed from the public eye. Legal teams and practices fit these descriptions very well. Although they don't have a direct impact on the revenue, legal compliance is built into the very core of every company so any eventual cracks and neglect in this area can only undermine its foundation.
In a situation like that, one of the best things one organization can do to avoid problems of this sort is to put all the care and resources into building its own legal team. Let's explore this topic in greater depth.
Reducing the long-term hiring costs
Mobility is very often cited as one of the main requirements of the present-day business world. In most cases that implies outsourcing this important business component to professional third-party teams. But we would like to point out that this logic applies only as a short-term solution since heavy reliance on third-party labor doesn’t make too much sense from a financial standpoint. This issue becomes even more important in case of the companies that need to use the help of legal professionals more frequently. Building your own legal team requires more effort but it represents a more viable long-term solution.
Establishing an internal knowledge base
Reducing the long-term hiring costs is not the only perk you get by sorting out the legal matters in-house. Each new case handled by your internal legal team builds up to something we can call your own legal knowledge base. In this case, some people can argue that most information regarding legal practices is widely available one way or another and they would be right. But, handling these issues with your own resources will allow you to get a much better idea about good legal practices, identify legal points of focus, optimize business practices, and establish a healthy level of quality control.
Drafting new contracts with ease
Corporate legal teams usually deal with corporate legal practice, which means that building your own legal teams doesn’t have to require too much time, money, and resources. And even when they need to venture outside their comfort zone, no matter whether we are speaking about legal procedures or regional legislative boundaries, your legal professionals can drastically optimize workload by penning down the contract drafts. So, if you are, for instance, going to do business in Australia, you will need to hire a professional lawyer in Sydney. But your internal teams can nevertheless prepare the papers.
An added layer of security when doing transactions
The business world exists entirely in the environment strictly defined by the legal frame. That means all transactions you are going to make will, at least in some capacity, need to take into consideration and leverage the legal requirements we cited above. Of course, it is very easy to see why hiring third-party teams to handle every single of these issues is off the table. Internal legal teams, on the other hand, will use the resources of your company to make sure all transactions and agreements you are going to make are in accordance with legal prescriptions, all without using any of the additional resources.
Enabling seamless internal communication
This topic very heavily leans toward the one we have just covered above – the business landscape is shaped and directed by legal requirements. Keeping up with these changes, or even worse, being completely unaware of them can cause massive discrepancies within one organization. It is easy to see then how having your own internal team that will keep track of these developments and serves as a glue that will keep all business departments on the same page can benefit your brand. And routing all the chatter that involves legal issues through this channel will make the whole process even more streamlined.
Access to young prospective talent
Last but not least, we would like to point out that having your own legal department can give you access to a very wide base of young prospective talents that are looking for an opportunity to sharpen their legal teeth and look forward to any opportunity to get real-life experience in corporate law. These people are committed, professional, and ready to work hard to prove themselves. At the same time, hiring younger talents costs only a fraction of what you’d need to pay for more experienced hires. And if you manage to build your brand into a fertile legal training ground you won’t lack any of the options.
We hope these couple of examples helped you reach a better understanding of why developing your own legal team can prove to be not only useful but rather critical for the success of your company. As we mentioned earlier, companies that want to succeed in the present-day business environment need to possess a tremendous level of speed and mobility. Being able to leverage your in-house resources to deal with any situation that may be waiting further down the road definitely sounds like that. In this regard, developing your internal legal teams is really no different.