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How to combat hesitancy when introducing a new in-house role
The head of legal operations at Gap Inc. has provided insight on how to navigate the idea of implementing this kind of role within the in-house team.
Emma Musgrave
Speaking at the annual CLOC Australia Institute Conference, held in Sydney earlier this month, Mike Haven, head of legal operations at Gap Inc., shed light on how to effectively manage any hesitancy when it comes to employing someone dedicated to the legal operations of a business’ in-house team.
“You have to have an elevator pitch to describe your role and what value you intend to bring to the organisation. I think that’s really important to have in your back pocket. You have to be able to describe your role to people throughout the organisation because it really is a cross-functional job.
“It’s one of the few jobs that touches everything and that's one of the reasons why it’s so fun and exciting.”
Mr Haven suggested that before starting, the legal operations employee should ask a lot of questions and figure out where the priorities in both the business at large and in the in-house legal team lie.
“You want to talk to your GC about what your strategies are and where you need to be focusing,” he said.
“You want to be talking to all the practice area leaders throughout your legal team and you want to make sure you’re asking a lot of questions of your business partners because you’re going to be working with finance, IT, HR, and others a lot and it’s important that you gain a lot of information from them so you can decide what your priorities are and what direction you want to go,” he said.
“It can be overwhelming; it's a sprint not a marathon and you have to do it step-by-step.”
The next step is to figure out what resources you have and how to utilise them, according to Mr Haven.
“Then you have to figure out who’s going to help you,” he said.
“If you're a team of one you might need to leverage a lot of other people throughout the company.
“Or, if you’re fortunate enough to have headcount and hire outside of the organisation then you’re in luck because there are a lot more people out there who are interested in doing legal operations nowadays than there were five years ago.”
Emma Musgrave
Emma Musgrave (née Ryan) is the managing editor, professional services at Momentum Media.
Emma has worked for Momentum Media since 2015, including five years spent as the editor of the company's legal brand - Lawyers Weekly. Throughout her time at Momentum, she has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest stories in corporate Australia. In addition, she has produced exclusive multimedia and event content related to the company's respective brands and audiences.
Prior to joining Momentum Media, Emma worked in breakfast radio, delivering news to the Central West region of NSW, before taking on a radio journalist role at Southern Cross Austereo, based in Townsville, North Queensland.
She holds a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) degree from Charles Sturt University.
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