LCOUNCIL法总专访 | 视客眼镜网李桂平：探索企业法务管理及合规战略实务经验

法总专访

   Exclusive Interview

Legal affairs involves numerous aspects of a company in its work, such as understanding and mastering the laws and regulations involved, providing legal opinions and advice, drafting and reviewing contracts and other legal documents, as well as participating in the company's litigation and arbitration cases. In order to promote the healthy development of the company   efficiently, a clear positioning is indispensable. May I ask Ms. Li how do you position legal affairs?

I define legal as a business partner with legal expertise, focused on helping organizations enhance their business value. Our work in legal affairs is actually very similar to the change of law by Shang Yang in ancient times. As a law changer, Shang Yang greatly promoted the social progress and economic development of the Qin Dynasty through system construction. And our legal affairs is to protect the healthy development of the company through risk management and other legal means to realize profitability.

Lawyers need to have a clear understanding of their role. Every legal person specializes in different areas; some are suited to being lawyers, while others are more suited to be in-house counsels. Although we take on different roles, we need to work closely together. We should do our best to handle what is within our capacity. And for work outside our professional capacity, we must ask for professional assistance. For example, we will ask cyber law experts to help us with platform rules, research on going overseas, etc.

Lawyers are the mobilizers of corporate legal resources. It is impossible for us as in-house counsels   to cover all specialties, and everyone specializes in different areas. I say to the management that ,for specific issues, legal affairs can give the direction of the case, while the specific landing needs to be carried out by specialized lawyers. Similarly, I preach to the business team - if it's an area I'm familiar with and I've experienced it, I'm sure I'll be able to give an answer right away. But there are some things that we need to coordinate resources and take on   multiple opinions, so we need to be given some time before we can give a satisfactory answer.

Overall, it is an important competency for our legal affairs, as legal resource mobilizers, to be able to find the most appropriate people to solve problems at critical moments.

Legal is not destined to be the most important person in the company, because we are auxiliaries, not a profitable department, but a department that spends money. However，let's not fight or complain. With the exception of certain people, legal is usually not the dominant player in the business, and our mission is to assist the business to be successful.

From a management perspective, managers can use management methods to solve legal problems. Similarly, the relationship between our legal affairs and business can be expressed as follows: analyze and solve management problems with legal methods. Thinking from different perspectives, although the position is different, but the goal is the same, and ultimately can reach a win-win situation for both sides.

It is only when there is "work" that there can be "position". The company is a profit center, and we, as auxiliaries, must have business value. In the beginning, the legal department may be a small team of a few people, and not popular with many departments of the company. But we will slowly grow as we win lawsuit after lawsuit and continue to solve problems for the business. We want the leadership of the company to recognize the importance of the legal department, and the company can not be separated from the legal department. When the business does not understand, the boss has misunderstood you, do not complain, when we do a good job, we will naturally and gradually establish our rightful place in the company.

Legal drives business success. This is borrowed from management consultants who say that if finance can drive business success. Then legal can do the same. We can tell managers， I can add to your success. This can promote the recognition of legal by managers.

Finally, the value of legal management is ex ante, not ex post. External lawyers help us with litigation, and our in-house counsels should demonstrate the value of risk prevention.

With your extensive experience and accomplishments in legal management, what can we do to ensure that the legal team works in a high quality and efficient manner?

The first is to identify where legal services are being provided. In-house counsels are like firefighters, going wherever they are needed - dealing with unexpected and urgent matters on a daily basis. Some legal services may get agitated and complain. Legal service to the business, but whether legal or business, our ultimate goal is to create value for the company, so we have to calm down.

The second is to clarify the goal of legal contract review. Contract is a very important and most common work of legal affairs. One of our partners is in charge of contract review, and her daily work is to deal with online contracts, and each online contract needs to go through several rounds of offline discussions, so her work is very stressful.

I always say that contract review work should be focused, prioritized, and targeted. This can reduce our work pressure. The goal of contract review is to achieve business purposes, legal should not be demanding that all contracts are particularly perfect, we only need to achieve the purpose of a win-win situation for both parties. In my opinion, the contract can be signed are not the main source of risk. Even if the contract is not perfect, both parties can discuss it and solve the problem in a commercial way. If we focuses too much on the details of a legal provision, the business may complain more. And, ultimately, the business will not find a contract good because of a well-written clause, but rather the market position determines the terms of the contract. Therefore, we legal can address these issues from a business perspective - proactively engaging with the business when weighing the risks and benefits. It's much easier to review contracts when you grasp the key points and major conflicts and stop obsessing over secondary issues.

Third, the principle of case handling. Avoid damaging the company's image, reduce losses, actively apply some strategies, and make good use of PR public relations skills to turn crisis into opportunity.

Fourth is the bottom line of negotiations. Stirring up business is actually the loss of both sides. In communication with the business, to ultimately facilitate the two sides to achieve the purpose of the transaction, as far as possible to mobilize resources, personnel to implement and solve the problem.

As companies grow and diversify their businesses, the scope of legal management is expanding, but should legal management involve every aspect of the organization or should it do something and not do anything? How to determine the boundaries of legal management and maintain its clarity?

With regard to the management boundaries of legal affairs, some enterprises have subdivided them into risk, compliance, internal control and legal affairs, which in fact all have a great deal of crossover and are the management requirements of different supervisory bodies based on different purposes. They are all essentially risk management and control, only that the means of attention and management of risk differ from department to department, as well as the form and content of management are emphasized. Once the objectives of management are clear, we know what needs to be done and thus what to focus on.

Risk control is about doing things, compliance is about doing people-related work, internal control is about doing things correctly, and risk management is about doing the right things.

Compliance management, which is the most basic requirement of risk management and internal control, can be regarded as the professional management of compliance risk and the basic component of enterprise internal control. Internal control is the daily control of all kinds of risks in terms of system design and implementation, emphasizing the risk control process. At the same time, internal control is the carrier for the implementation of compliance management and comprehensive risk management. Risk management is the management of all risks, including compliance risk, focusing on the realization of the overall strategy and business objectives of the enterprise, and focusing on both the risk control process and the results.

We know that you have worked in a well-known enterprise for several years and led a team involved in many major company projects and system construction. We would like to ask you how to effectively manage the legal team in order to improve team efficiency and performance and realize the goal of legal management?

The first is the development of legal staff's ability to perform their duties. It is very important to be proactive in understanding the business. Take our team as an example, the two main members of our team are very young, but know the business very well, just that sometimes they do not know where the boundaries are, do not know how to do the right thing, do not know how to judge and assess. In fact, by continuously deepening the communication with the business in the daily work and after work, the legal affairs can be more clear about their position.

The second is experience transmission. We can use technology and management tools to do a good job of internal information circulation and inheritance to help employees vertically improve their professional abilities and horizontally improve their cognitive abilities.

Apart from internal mechanism, we can also bring in third party training. LCOUNCIL, for example, can provides excellent online and offline training, and the service staff will push some courses, such as marketing, advertising, AIGC, etc., in a very timely manner. I often push it to internal partners, as well as relevant business departments to learn.

Second, the promotion channel of legal personnel, usually "P / M" two lines. If they are good at research, they will take the "P line" that is, the expert line; if they are good at system construction, team management, they will take the "M line" that is, the management line. These two roles complement each other in the work. For example, in a case, the expert will play a great role in analyzing the case, while the manager will be able to better coordinate the human and material resources of the whole case in an orderly manner.

Thirdly, we focus on the construction of team culture value. Cultural values are the foundation, and in the case of Sigo, for example, our culture is responsibility, high aspirations, result orientation, all-out effort, trust-based, win-win cooperation, and the pursuit of fairness.

We are a fully decentralized organizational team, and therefore need employees to dare to take responsibility, which is a prerequisite for obtaining resources and rights. Including the benefit distribution mechanism is also based on the degree of responsibility as the core principle. We emphasize long-termism, reject opportunism, and truly focus on our mission - to promote the development of the industry, to create value for customers, partners and shareholders on a sustainable basis, and to help employees achieve their dreams. In order to achieve results, we focus on our goals and go all out, with all resources and strategies centered around reaching them. Based on trust, which is reflected in our office supplies for self-collection, simplify part of the reimbursement process, optimize the attendance system at work, everything is based on the two-way trust between the company and employees. As a result, we can focus more on key things and achieve efficient organization. At the same time, the company will also make a strategic layout for the growth of employees, which is a win-win situation, and we believe that fairness to employees and fairness to the enterprise will realize the common progress of both sides.

Fourthly, the strategy is the pull. Correct direction and correct method is the foundation. We should also seek leadership support, because we will face a lot of upward communication, and this requires some skills, for example:

1.Enhance the sense of urgency: we can express to the leadership if we do not do this will lead to what serious consequences.

2.Gathering partners: we can synergize the finance department, quality department and other departments. When we face problems, we can fully mobilize resources and manpower to solve problems efficiently.

3.Have a common vision and goals, eliminate resistance, build team confidence: we can establish a system to help companies establish good communication channels. When we encounter problems, we are no longer alone. This can reduce the communication time in the process of dealing with the problem, so that we can efficiently focus on solving problems with unity of purpose.

4.Solidify the results: do a good job of summarizing and reviewing the work, and consolidate the results of the existing work.