Sometimes you hear career advice and think, “yes, of course.” It’s the advice you would have given to a friend. It’s logical. You just needed someone to say it to you.

Other advice isn’t quite like that. You may hear it and wonder whether it could really work for you. Or what it actually has to do with building a successful career.

But when you try it out, sometimes to your own surprise, it really works.

That’s what this newsletter issue is: the advice you probably haven’t heard before, definitely didn’t think of, and may not believe me on. And yet, if you give it a try, I think you’ll find that it brings huge benefits.

This is the third issue on this topic. If you want more, check out these issues from February. Weird Ways to Become a Better In-House Lawyer and How to Become a Better In-House Lawyer (by doing things differently)

Workloads shift. Priorities change. Legal teams need ways to stay ahead without overextending themselves.

Latitude provides experienced former Big Law attorneys and in-house counsel who can step in on a flexible basis to support your team. Every Latitude attorney is thoughtfully vetted for skills, judgment, professionalism, and the ability to step in and contribute meaningfully to sophisticated and complex legal matters.

With the right flexible legal talent in place, legal leaders can amplify strategic impact—leading nimble, high-performing teams that protect the business, fuel growth, and drive value across the organization. Latitude attorneys help in-house legal departments add capacity when workloads shift without sacrificing quality. Legal departments of all shapes and sizes rely on Latitude attorneys for leave coverage, backfill support, special projects, surge and overflow support, and fractional needs.

Connect with Latitude Partner Kyle Robisch to learn more.

Picking up with tip number 11 that you probably haven’t heard before. You can view 1-5 here and 6-10 here.

As an in-house lawyer, one of the most important things you can do for your company is say the hard thing. In a room full of people where no one wants to deliver bad news, tell a team they need to start over, point out a meaningful risk no one has thought through, or note a better option that should have been considered — if that person can be you, you're well on your way to making a huge impact.

You can't make saying the hard things the only thing you do, or you won't get invited into the room for long. But when the hard thing is also the only right thing, you need to be prepared.

And one of the best ways to prepare yourself to say the hard thing, and to handle the criticism and even anger directed your way, is to get used to people disliking your work, your art, or even your opinions.

Enter a poetry contest with tough judges. Put your small business side project on Yelp. Or create content online; I promise you this one will thicken your skin fast.

A couple of weeks ago, a guy on LinkedIn accused me of "pimping my little vanity projects over my ethical and legal duties to the company." He hadn't read the post closely enough to notice his own comment didn't really apply. It still worked as practice. The stakes are zero, but it still stings, and I get to practice reacting appropriately when it doesn't matter at all. I'd been through this before. Back when I was running my juice bar, someone left us a Yelp review complaining our acai bowls didn't have condensed milk; we were a vegan cafe, and that was the whole point.

The practice matters because in other rooms, the stakes will be real. There will be a colleague who doesn't want to hear the deal has a problem, and thinks legal is just being difficult. Or a founder who thinks legal is the reason the round is taking too long. If the first time you feel real pushback is in that room, you'll be thrown. Get the reps in somewhere low stakes first.

It can feel most natural to talk only to the people we work with directly, and to peers at our own level. In some organizational cultures, those are the only people we're "supposed" to talk to.

But that's a miss. Even if your closest work friends end up being your peers or your team, there's no reason to limit yourself to talking only to them. You'll be amazed by what you can learn from people ten years your senior, or ten years junior to you. And you may be surprised to find you build great relationships with them too.

Different generations have different expectations of work. As groups, we have different exposure to and comfort with various technologies. We want different things out of our careers. Cross-generational conversations are key to understanding, and even benefiting from, those differences.

Start small: grab coffee with someone two levels down you've never worked with, or ask the most senior person in a meeting a real question instead of just nodding along.

The person three years in still sees things about your company that you stopped noticing years ago. The person who's been there twenty years remembers why the rule you're annoyed by exists. Both are worth the coffee.