InCounsel Weekly #257

C Suite

Seeing GCs move to the C Suite led the Financial Times to rename its “General Counsel Report” to “Business Legal Leaders” 🙌

SharePoint AI

Imagine uploading a contract to SharePoint and it auto-populating the library columns with counterparty, key dates and clauses. Well, here it is for real ⚡️

Re Value Pricing:

“…overwhelmingly, is those firms that ultimately made the transition to value pricing say if they had their time again, they would have stopped recording time sooner.” 🌈

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"InCounsel weekly is the one email I always read and click on all the links!" – Natalie Truong, Head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at Ad Standards.

InCounsel Weekly #256

GC vs. CLO

Former GC-turned-CLO, Adam Wardel explains how the roles differ, and how to know which one might be right for you 🤲

Demo

A short demo of a tool that helps you optimise your contracts for fast acceptance, or spot inbound contracts that need surgery 🚨

No one cares

If you’re leading a project – training, new process, revised template etc – remember, no one cares about it as much as you do 😟

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"I always look forward to it landing in my inbox."– Mel Scott, Senior Legal Counsel at Megaport.

InCounsel Weekly #255

Super GC

A quick 6 min clip on the rise of the ‘Super GC’ 🦸

Process map

Alex Herrity at adidas on the friction created by asking a legal team to ‘map out your current processes’ 🤦

Well said

“All the change management in the world cannot make users adopt a bad experience…” 👏

Source

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"I open your emails as soon as I receive them!" – Melissa Monks, Lead Counsel – Competition & Compliance and BlueScope Steel.

InCounsel Weekly #254

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Budget

Three tips for an in-house legal budget as we approach 2023 💸

Standards

A global list of legal standardisation projects from task codes, to metrics, template docs, and more 🔍

Whinenot

Because life’s too short for average wine and billable hours 🍷

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"I love reading these gems each week with a fresh coffee." – Mel Scott, Senior Legal Counsel at Megaport.

InCounsel Weekly #253

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Listen

A conversation with one of our favourite GC authors, Sterling Miller 🎙

Workshop

A last minute shout-out for a virtual contract design workshop from one of the best in the biz 🎟

The day

A beautiful idea to create a new favourite part of the day 🌅

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"One of the only mail outs I genuinely enjoy reading." – Mandy Chapman at Beyond International.

InCounsel Weekly #252

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Canvas

Throw back to our Service Model Canvas for Legal Departments 💁

Takeaways

Three takeaways from last week’s ILTACON – North America’s largest legal technology conference 📣

Handshakes

The importance of handshakes in the contracting process 🤝

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"They are a nice ‘pause’ in my busy working day." – Melissa Monks, Lead Counsel – Competition & Compliance and BlueScope Steel.

InCounsel Weekly #251

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Send it

10 factors to consider when deciding when to send work to outside counsel, and when to bring it back 💸

Privacy

A ‘Wikipedia’ for global privacy laws 🌏

Billable art

An AI art bot was asked to create a piece of art with the title "The Billable Hour" 👾

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"My favourite newsletter and the only one I ever actually read. Love it 🥰" – Electra Japonas, CEO at tlb + Co-Founder at oneNDA.

InCounsel Weekly #250

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

What is ‘market’?

Get free access to a new product that provides real market data on hundreds of contract terms 📊

Liability limits

… and a deep dive analysis of said data on ‘what is market’ for limitation of liability clauses 🛡

Know-it-all

How sole GCs can manage the expectation to ‘know all the laws’ 🦸

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"Best legal related snippets I have read/watched in ages." – Caroline Ferguson, Business Transformation and Innovation Director at Simpson Grierson.

InCounsel Weekly #249

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Templates

A free set of template contracts vetted by over 30 in-house lawyers for parties to negotiate by cover page, not redlines 👏

Desk

adidas Director of Legal Solutions, Alex Herrity unearths this gem showing the evolution of the desk since 1980 📠

Workspace

… and a science-backed deep dive on how to optimise your workspace for productivity, focus and creativity 🧠

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"InCounsel manage to find the best of the web for this newsletter." – Jeremy Stevenson, Managing Director - Legal & Risk at CPE Capital.

InCounsel Weekly #248

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Robust

The biggest cause of drawn out contract negotiations is starting from unreasonable AKA “robust” standard terms 😭

Home

This country looks set to make working from home a legal right 🏡

NotLeap

A class-action for firms that have had to spend time and money moving from LEAP Legal Software ⚖️

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"Still one of my favourite sources of news on legal innovation and tech." – Shilpa Bhandarkar, CEO at Nakhoda.

InCounsel Weekly #247

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Zero

A step-by-step guide for lawyers to reach ‘inbox zero’ 📭

Survey

The top 5 findings from the ACC’s latest law department survey 📊

Test

An ‘on the spot’ accuracy test of an AI tool flagging key data/clauses in a randomly-picked MSA ✅

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InCounsel weekly is the one email I always read and click on all the links!" – Natalie Truong, Head of Legal and Regulatory Affairs at Ad Standards.

InCounsel Weekly #246

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Imposter

How in-house lawyers can recognise and escape the clutches of imposter syndrome 🌤

Refresh

A refreshing take on a move back from in-house to private practice 🌈

Billing

When reading billing guidelines, I keep thinking these should be issued by a firm to all its clients, not the other way around 🤷

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"I always look forward to it landing in my inbox."– Mel Scott, Senior Legal Counsel at Megaport.

InCounsel Weekly #245

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Privilege

A recap on legal professional privilege for in-house lawyers ⚖️

Independence

… and a template amendment letter and board paper to help GCs/CLOs enshrine their independence into their employment contract 📜

Cap table

In yet another win for standardisation, the first version of the Open Cap Table Format is out 📊

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"I open your emails as soon as I receive them!" – Melissa Monks, Lead Counsel – Competition & Compliance and BlueScope Steel.

InCounsel Weekly #244

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Recap

Happy EOFY! Here's a recap of your three most popular items (by click through) so far for 2022...

#1 Templates

A (small) collection of free, open source template contracts vetted by a solid crew of in-house lawyers 💪🏻

#2 LinkedIn

One of the best reasons I've read for GCs to post on LinkedIn ✍🏻

#3 Automate

An in-house guide to document automation 📝

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"I love reading these gems each week with a fresh coffee." – Mel Scott, Senior Legal Counsel at Megaport.

InCounsel Weekly #243

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Climate clauses

Get free access to the clauses and tools you need to align your contract drafting with net zero 🍃

At CLOC ‘22…

"Stand up if you have CLM" "Stay standing if it's working well for you" Half of audience sits down 🤦

Spend

Codat’s sole counsel, Rebecca McKenzie on how she tracks external spend using a shared spreadsheet 📊

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"One of the only mail outs I genuinely enjoy reading." – Mandy Chapman at Beyond International.

InCounsel Weekly #242

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Clusters

A new eDiscovery tool to help lawyers sort through millions of documents, featuring a 30,000-foot snapshot and a granular, down-to-the-document view 🔍

Clause library

The ultimate guide to building clause libraries 👏

Question

At a company where legal ops is new, which of the ‘Core 12’ would you start with? 🤷

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"They are a nice ‘pause’ in my busy working day." – Melissa Monks, Lead Counsel – Competition & Compliance and BlueScope Steel.

InCounsel Weekly #241

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

CLM

I thought last year was big, but new funding for CLM in 2022 has already surpassed $1 billion 🤯

Password

How long would it take a hacker to crack your password? 🔓

Big Four

If the rumours are true, “the great obstacle to the Big Four in their efforts to build legal businesses” might soon fall away 💸

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"Best legal related snippets I have read/watched in ages." – Caroline Ferguson, Business Transformation and Innovation Director at Simpson Grierson.

InCounsel Weekly #240

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Portals

Eight firms, eight portals, eight passwords – why your client doesn’t want a client portal ⚠️

Trainees

Here's Invesco senior legal counsel, Emma Norman on how she formalised an in-house program for trainees 🧑‍🏫

Clean

The case for finally cleaning your desk 🧠

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"My favourite newsletter and the only one I ever actually read. Love it 🥰" – Electra Japonas, CEO at tlb + Co-Founder at oneNDA.

InCounsel Weekly #239

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Contracts per hr

The math that shows 👆 how improving productivity from 1 to 2 contracts per hour is more impactful than going from 2 to 50 🤯

oneDPA

After several rounds of feedback from 1,000+ lawyers reviewing, commenting and voting on the project, the oneDPA is go 🚀

Overflow

Why outsourcing "overflow” work is not only bad for the supplier, but also bad for you 🚨

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"InCounsel manage to find the best of the web for this newsletter." – Jeremy Stevenson, Managing Director - Legal & Risk at CPE Capital.

InCounsel Weekly #238

Bite-sized 🍣 for in-house counsel and creative legal minds. Curated and crafted with ❤️ by David Bushby. Newcomers can subscribe here :)

Wayfinder

A three-step run sheet for legal ops to think beyond improving processes to completely reimagining them 🚀

Tags

If you’re looking for a standardised way to categorise your legal work, then look no further than the SALI framework 🏷

Jaded

How not to become a jaded in-house lawyer 💆

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"Still one of my favourite sources of news on legal innovation and tech." – Shilpa Bhandarkar, CEO at Nakhoda.