Deep Dive
The Trust Test Most In-House Lawyers Get Wrong
Most in-house lawyers know that trust is what lets them make an impact.
When people trust you, they bring you problems early. They bring the question before it's a crisis and the deal before it's signed, so that you get to shape things instead of just cleaning them up.
All that's true. And important.
But there's more to the trust the most impactful in-house lawyers build than knowing the law or even giving solid legal advice.
Which one of these lawyers do you think is more trusted?
Lawyer 1: Always gives accurate legal advice and rarely has to look anything up. He’s been practicing for 25 years and knows the ins and outs of all relevant law.
Lawyer 2: Gives accurate legal advice, though occasionally caveats an answer she is not sure about by acknowledging she’ll confirm and come back. Has been practicing for 5 years and knows most of the relevant law, but sometimes has to look things up.
Here’s my answer:
You don’t actually have enough information to know. Either of these lawyers could be highly trusted by their colleagues. And either of these lawyers could be people their colleagues don’t fully trust.
Because trust of in-house lawyers is about a lot more than knowing the law.
Knowing the law is essential, and transparency when you need to check something is important. But that’s the floor. These lawyers meet it.
We need more information than their mastery of the law in order to assess how much trust they have earned.
Trust exists on a spectrum, and is built bit by bit.
Early in my in-house career, I had a small interaction that changed how I think about building trust.
A colleague reached out because he had been asked to sign an NDA, and he didn’t understand why. He understood that our company was considering doing business with the company asking for the NDA, but he assumed that the contract itself could cover confidentiality. The NDA was the fifth one that week (his department was looking for a new vendor and talking to multiple options), and so he was somewhat annoyed.
We talked through some of the reasons for NDAs, and the idea that while confidential information will likely be shared while the parties are in discussion, there is no guarantee of ever reaching a final contract. It was a 3 minute conversation and not really legal advice. Just helping him think through reasoning, which he immediately understood when I pointed out that we wouldn’t reach a deal with all of the companies he was talking to.
But he appreciated it. Because I'd helped him change how he perceived the situation, and turn an annoyance into a small largely administrative task that needed to get done.
A few weeks later, he came by because he had a “this probably isn’t a legal issue, but just in case it is” type scenario to talk through. It absolutely was a potential legal issue, these things often are, and was also easily navigable because he’d brought it to me so early.
So we worked through it. And everything was fine.
After that, he just kept coming back. Sometimes he brought me actual legal issues, other times questions he wasn’t sure were legal, and other times, he just wanted my thoughts as a different perspective.
Because he trusted me. Not because I gave great legal advice. But because I helped him do his job better.
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Here’s what colleagues are really looking for when deciding whether to trust in-house lawyers.
1. Do they know the law?
Your colleagues aren’t actually well positioned to judge you based on whether you know the law. Not directly, anyway. I’ve written about what they judge on instead before. You can read that here.
But also, knowing the law is the bare minimum for effectiveness as an in-house lawyer. And over time, even people who aren’t lawyers will be able to tell if you don’t actually know what you’re talking about when you give legal advice.
So to gain trust, start with knowing the law or how to find out. You don't have to know everything cold, like Lawyer 1; so long as you’re transparent about where you’re unsure, like Lawyer 2, you’ll be okay here.
Just remember: knowing the law is a floor.
2. Do they help their colleagues?
Go back to the NDA story. I didn’t gain his trust because I gave great legal advice on NDAs. I didn’t even give any legal advice on NDAs. But I was helpful. I showed him why NDAs actually made sense, and that turned an annoyance into a task he understood. That built trust.
