Deep Dive
How to Handle “It's With Legal” Under Three Different Circumstances.
As you’re logging on to a Zoom for an internal discussion about a key customer relationship, a ten-page proposed amendment to their longstanding contract hits your inbox. You’ve been asking to see the proposal for two weeks.
A few minutes into the call, the CFO asks for the status of the amendment. The account executive replies, “it’s with legal.”
This is both factually true (as of 7 minutes and 35 seconds ago) and hugely misleading.
How you respond in the moment matters to your relationship with the AE, and your reputation across the company.
The phrase “it’s with legal” makes in-house lawyers everywhere cringe. But you’re going to hear it. And it’s going to call for different responses under different circumstances.
Here’s how to react in a way that maintains your reputation as a true business builder, and also strengthens your relationships.
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Overarching principle: be neither combative nor a doormat.
Responding to “it’s with legal,” requires judgment.
If you respond too strongly, or defensively when it’s not called for, you develop a reputation for being combative and difficult to work with.
But if you fail to stand up for yourself or your team when you’re being blamed for delays that impact the company’s key goals, or that were entirely outside of your control, you’ll start to get a reputation as a blocker rather than a business builder.
Here’s how to strike that balance.
Scenario 1: The legal team recently received the request, and it’s still within SLAs.
If someone publicly states that a task or document is “with legal,” when it is in fact with legal, and also within your SLAs, the best response is factual and accurate. If you don’t have SLAs, use the reasonable person test (ask how long a reasonable person, with all of the facts, would expect this project to take). The level of detail you provide depends on additional factors.
