TRANSFORMING YOUR LAW DEPARTMENT

Delivering value to the business and making it visible constitute the ultimate challenge for law departments. I help you achieve both.

UNLOCKING YOUR VALUE POTENTIAL

I have been working internationally for over 20 years as a management consultant for law departments. My philosophy is simple: the purpose of the law department is to create value. My role as a consultant is to help you achieve that goal.

What does value creation mean for law departments? For whom are they supposed to create value? What does this value consist of? And how do you create in practice? Let’s talk.

ISSUES THAT MATTER

The starting point of any intervention for a law department is a serious problem they need to solve or an important objective they wish to reach. That includes potentially a lot of issues. Over the years, I have intervened in the following areas:

Mission, vision & values - Business partner - Creating value - Innovation - KPIs - Role of Legal - Law department audit - Internal communication, cohesion, and collaboration - Workload management - Streamlining legal operations - Work-streams and processes - Soft Skills - Compliance organization and strategy - Soft skills - Writing skills - Presentation skills - Legal design - Project management - Counselling skills - Impact - Retention and motivation of key talent - Career management - Culture - Leadership - Team cohesion - Matrix organization - Merger and reorganizations -  Legal & compliance policies - Sourcing and outside counsel management - Technology

You may think it is a pretty long list for one individual,  but that’s exactly the point: everything is connected, and therefore the best approach is systemic. I do not handle issues as if they were isolated – they are not. I look at the entire context and connect the dots. This is the only way to achieve sustainable change and improvement.

Please scroll through the list below and see typical requests from my clients. Which would be relevant for you or your firm? You may also print the entire list and use it as a self-assessment of your legal practice.

    • We feel the need to discuss and define our mission, vision, and values.

    • We want to operate and be perceived as business partners. Are we there yet? How can we elevate our game to achieve this?

    • We already are trusted business partners. What’s next?

    • We want to formulate our strategy, key objectives and KPIs.

    • What is our role? How far does it go? Where should it stop? Are we all aligned on this?

    • We need an audit of the law department. We want to know its strengths and weaknesses, how it compares to others, and what can be done to improve it.

    • How to structure the legal department in the optimal way within a complex matrix organization, with regions, business units, and excellence centers?

    • We have merged with another company. How can we turn two legal departments into one?

    • How to design a new compliance department? How to reorganize an existing one? And should it be within or outside the legal department?

    • Our workload is just too much. We are overwhelmed. What should we prioritize? What can we stop doing? What can we do differently, and how? And how do we get the business to agree with all of this?

    • How to make legal operations more efficient?

    • We feel we need to clarify, simplify, and formalize our workstreams and processes. We need a law department handbook.

    • Our policies are a mess. How to organize them is an orderly, effective way? How to make them easily accessible? How to ensure consistent drafting? How to define a complete policy framework?

    • How to improve communication, cohesion and collaboration within the law department?

    • We want to improve writing skills and produce consistently high-value, short, clear, practical, to-the-point legal advice.

    • We want to deliver outstanding presentations, life or through videoconferencing.

    • How to do project management?

    • What are the essential legal design skills we should acquire and develop, and how can it change how we communicate with and are perceived by the business?

    • What is risk management, and how does it apply to legal practice?

    • How to develop other relevant soft skills, such as counseling, interpersonal effectiveness, meeting management, negotiations, and more?

    • How to retain talented lawyers? How to offer exciting career perspectives? How to help them pursue a meaningful professional development path? And what if we can’t?

    • What is the best leadership style for the legal department?

    • We want to develop a strong culture within the legal department.

    • We want to re-energize the law department, challenge the status quo, develop new perspectives and habits, ignite engagement, and aim for higher vibes.

    • How to convince management we need more people?

    • The business does not seem much interested in legal matters. How can we get their attention and make them care?

    • How to design and lead exciting legal & compliance training programs for the business?

    • Our policies are too legalistic and nobody reads them. How to rewrite them to make them more attractive and relevant?

    • How to manage our outside counsel in an optimal way, from hiring to managing budgets to assessing performance?

    • We are not satisfied with the technology we use. But how do we determine what we need instead?

    • How can make the best of the technology tools we already have? How can we use it more effectively?

    • We need change management guidance as we move to a new technology.

CLIENTS

For more than 20 years, I have had the pleasure of working with law departments of companies like those listed below. All projects were completed solo or with my business partner Barend Blondé.

BASF, BNP Paribas Fortis, bPost, Bridgestone Europe, Caceis, Capgemini, Deutsche Bank, Dexia, Elia, Electrabel, Engie, Entsoe, EY, Fluxys, International Paper, KBL, Leroy Merlin, Le TEC, Levi’s Strauss, Pfizer, Philip Morris International, Proximus, Renault, Riverside, RTL Group, SNCB/NMKS, Sofina, Solvay, Sumitomo Bank, Swift, Toshiba, Toyota Motor Europe, Ubisoft, UC Louvain, Umicore, and others.

TESTIMONIALS

“Thank you, Antoine! You have been just fantastic! The project roadmap has attracted a lot of enthusiasm and interest all over our community, and we are so grateful to you for that! You have done an amazing job!“

Laurence EINSWEILER, Legal Director Belgium-Luxembourg & International Developed Markets Vaccines Legal Lead, Pfizer

ABOUT ME

Do you need to introduce me at a conference or event? Here are a few lines that can help:

“Antoine Henry de Frahan is a management consultant specialized in the assistance to law departments. He holds a law degree (magna cum laude) from Université Libre de Bruxelles and a LL.M. from Columbia Law School. He has worked as an attorney for Clearly Gottlieb and Linklaters, and as an international legal counsel for Engie, before starting his consulting career in 2000. He is the author of several books and of dozens of articles on issues and participates in many conferences and panels relevant for heads of legal (in particular at the IJE/IBJ in Belgium and the AFJE in France). He is also the chair of the Heads of Legal peer group for EGN (Executive Global Network) and is an Affiliate Professor in the LL.M. program of Edhec Business School in France.”