- in European Union
As much as we might wish it were different, it’s a fact of life that an in-house legal team will have to justify its IP and legal plans to senior management. Unfortunately, a good plan on its own won’t necessarily suffice. Being conscious of how you are presenting your strategic plan can play a critical role in how it is perceived.
There are several things you need to do to give your legal and IP plans the best chance of being approved (the most important of which is making sure they are sensible, achievable, and robust), but these five ‘magic’ sentences can certainly help!
5 Things to Say When Presenting Your Strategic Plan
1. This will add value to the business.
It sounds obvious, but it’s easy for an in-house legal team to forget that what they do exists in a wider business context. Legal plans are not just about the legal department. If you can show how your legal and IP strategy adds value to the business beyond merely providing protection, that will go a long way to getting your plans approved.
Examples of this approach include featuring strategic plans to increase the performance of IP licenses or suggesting strategies for monetizing your IP portfolio beyond its use within the company.
2. This will save the business money.
While adding value will get you a long way in terms of getting your legal plans approved, cutting costs can provide a shortcut. Unlike increasing revenue, cost-cutting (as long as it does not imply a downgrading of your ability to do the job properly) has a direct, positive impact on the bottom line.
Anything in your legal plans that is likely to have an immediate, bottom-line impact will give you a better chance of getting those plans approved. Examples of this could include outsourcing certain functions to an alternative legal services provider to save money you currently spend on external counsel. Examples of this approach include outsourcing routine or administrative tasks, such as IP recordals or trademark docketing.
3. This will increase certainty and predictability.
Unpredictability is the enemy of good business, just as it is of lawyers. Legal plans that demonstrate increased certainty for the business are likely to get a good hearing from senior management.
Certainty could be a question of budget predictability; for example, if you can negotiate fixed fee arrangements with your external counsel. You could also develop legal plans which incorporate certainty in terms of outcome—perhaps by suggesting a settlement strategy in a long-running litigation, for example.
4. This will reduce risk.
Business risk for legal departments can take many forms, and managing risk is central to the job of a good in-house legal team. An in-house legal department that has a strategic plan that helps reduce risk is more likely to gain approval from management.
Risk reduction could be as simple as engaging a new supplier to manage your IP renewals or investing in a software system to help with administrative tasks.
In a more sophisticated sense, you could also include in your legal plans how you will work with other areas of the business to identify and mitigate key legal risks.
5. This will help achieve the strategic objectives of the business.
Last but certainly not least, any strong legal plans will take account of the overall business objectives. Perhaps your business has identified China as an important market for expansion. Lining up your legal plans with that objective—perhaps by identifying key risks and mitigations in China—will certainly help persuade management to approve your plans.
If that sounds simplistic, it can also be more subtle. If the business’s strategic objective is to outsource manufacturing, for example, then a legal plan from an in-house legal department that includes a strategy for protecting your brand from counterfeiting will likely be popular.
These sentences on their own will not get your legal plans approved. However, they can help you set your priorities in terms of communicating those plans to company decision-makers and ensure that your plans get judged on their value, not merely their cost.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
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