Why Lawyers Need to Think Like Business Managers

Legal Advice Isn’t Enough Anymore

In many of my recent conversations with in-house counsel, one theme keeps coming up: legal teams can’t just say “no” anymore. They can’t be seen as a roadblock.

Today, a lawyer’s role goes far beyond spotting issues or reciting the law. Businesses expect legal teams to help them move forward — to weigh risks, propose solutions and find a way through.

Being commercially minded is no longer optional. It’s the difference between being seen as a strategic partner or a bureaucratic obstacle.

Thinking About the Whole Business

When you work on governance or company structuring, it’s tempting to focus narrowly on compliance:

• Does this meet the letter of the law?
• Is it regulator-proof?
• Is it watertight from a litigation perspective?

These are important questions — but they’re only half the picture. Good governance should also support how the business operates and enable its growth.

If you design a governance structure that slows every decision with too many approvals, you may have technically “protected” the company — but you’ve crippled its ability to act quickly. Remove too many controls and you create speed at the cost of accountability.

The commercially minded lawyer finds the sweet spot — structures and processes that are practical, scalable and usable in the real world.

Managing Up and Managing Down

One of the most valuable skills a lawyer can learn — and one that offshore law firms often teach well — is how to manage both up and down.

• Managing up means presenting legal advice to senior leadership as a set of options, not a list of problems. Leaders don’t just want to hear “this is risky.” They want to know “is this acceptable?” and “how do we make this work?”
• Managing down means empowering teams to act. If every decision needs your approval, you become a bottleneck. Building systems and playbooks helps the business move faster — safely — without waiting on you for every call.

Done well, this two-way approach turns legal into a bridge between strategy and execution, not a barrier.

Stakeholders Beyond “The Client”

When I worked in private practice, I thought of “the client” as the person sending the instructions.

In-house work forces you to think bigger. Every legal decision affects multiple stakeholders — finance, compliance, operations, HR — and you ignore them at your peril. A commercially minded lawyer brings these voices into the conversation early and designs governance with their needs in mind.

My Lesson in Commercial Mindset

I learned this lesson first-hand.

I once prepared what I thought was a perfect, belt-and-braces security document for a bank. The feedback? “Technically excellent, but too long for end clients to digest.”

They needed something legally robust and easy for their customers to understand.

That was a lesson in commercial mindset: good legal advice must work in the real world.

A document can be flawless from a legal perspective — but if it’s unusable by the business, it fails its purpose.

From Risk Spotter to Solution Builder

The most powerful mindset shift a lawyer can make is moving from identifying risks to building solutions.

It’s easy to say, “This could be a problem.” It’s far more valuable to say, “This could be a problem — here are three ways to fix it.”

When you’re known as someone who helps move things forward, you get invited into the conversation earlier — where your advice can make the most difference.

Final Thoughts

The role of the lawyer is evolving — and that’s a good thing.

If you want to remain relevant and influential, you need to do more than spot issues. You need to understand the business, balance speed with risk, and deliver solutions that work in practice — not just in theory.

And always ask yourself: does this help the business move forward?

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