The two primary reasons for miscommunications between counsel and client are the concept of legal relevance and corporate decisions to keep trial counsel in the dark about settlement strategy.
In a big litigation matter or regulatory review, the work is subject to sudden and dramatic peaks that corporatelegal departments and their external counsel may not be able to handle.
So I reached out to my friend John DeGroote of Settlement Perspectives, a former in-house counsel and Chief Legal Officer who knew far more about corporate interests than I ever would.
Additionally, social entrepreneurs who are cash-strapped may not always prioritize hiring legalcounsel to help them navigate important issues like choosing the appropriate corporate structure to account for both short- and long-term goals and securing intellectual property rights.
In the matter under discussion, it will be somewhat misguided for legalcounsel to argue facilely in defense of their U.S.corporate clients that the Shariah authorities were employed strictly to issue legal rulings on financial matters and all other rulings fall outside the scope of their employment.
Yet corporatecounsel must now view LSO as a strategic value proposition the benefits of which inure not only to the Legal Department, but to the company as a whole by putting the right people in the right place doing the right thing both (i) internally and (ii) with outside counsel and LSO providers.