What can an in-house counsel learn from home cooking? 做法务如烹小鲜

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I have been staying at home for the past few months. During this period, I have shared the home cooking work with my wife. I didn’t realize it will take so much time and labor to prepare a decent meal for the family. In the beginning, I felt it a painful task. Surprisingly, with some more practice, I gradually found that it might teach some lessons on working as an in-house counsel, for it shows some similarities with an in-house counsel’s work. Here are the key ones:

由于肺炎疫情，过去几个月我都宅在家里。在这期间，我和太太轮流做饭。我没想到给家人做一顿像样的饭菜竟然需要耗费那么多时间和体力。刚开始的时候，我觉得这是一项痛苦的差事。不过，做了几次之后，我居然慢慢领会到，做饭这件事也许可以给公司法务的工作提供一些启示，因为两者有很多相似之处。以下是我的几点主要体会：

Strategic thinking. My wife and I did the cooking on weekly shifts. It is most efficient to plan the meals for the coming week and purchase all necessary ingredients for that week’s meals at one time in advance. This involves the formulation of recipes for each of the next seven days and selection of the ingredients to make each meal. This is a kind of strategic thinking. The same applies to in-house counseling. A good in-house counsel will maintain a clear picture of the organization’s future development, and accordingly, an action plan for legal measures to support such development should be formulated.  With the organization’s development strategies evolving with the time, the legal planning should be modified without delay. Lack of the ability of strategic thinking, an in-house counsel risks missing the paces of the organization’s march forward. 

战略思维。太太和我按周轮流做饭。最省事的方法就是将下一周的菜单拟定好，然后提前将所需的食材一次性买好。这就要求对接下来七天中每一天的食谱进行设计，并选定每一道菜将要用到的材料。这种预判性思维是一种战略思维。法务的工作同样需要这种思维。一个好的法务应对所在公司的未来发展路径有清晰的认识，从而在此基础上规划好采取哪些法律措施去支持公司实现发展目标。而随着公司的发展战略发生变化，法务工作的计划也需及时修正。缺乏进行战略思维的能力，法务可能会跟不上公司前进的步伐。

Proactive response.  More than often, planning falls behind changes. In one week when I was supposed to cook, I planned to make deep-fried pork steaks for dinner on that Wednesday. Unexpectedly, my wife caught a cold on Tuesday and her throat turned sore over the night. She had not asked, but I realized that it would not be healthful for her to have deep-fried foods in the coming days.  Without hesitation, I changed the meal plan by moving the tomato-and-minced-pork spaghetti from Friday to Wednesday, and left the deep-fried pork steaks for Friday, anticipating my wife to recover by then. My wife was very grateful for my thoughtful adjustments. Similarly, proactiveness demands in-house counsels to be sensitive to unexpected changes in an organization’s daily operations and to bring out corresponding legal reactions as necessary on their own initiative. Non-legal colleagues may not have the knowledge or mindset to sense the legal impact of an incident in business soon enough, and thus it may be too late to cure if the in-house counsel passively waits until those colleagues raise inquiries (the chances are that the counsel will not be consulted until things run out of control).

主动反应。计划往往跟不上变化。有一个星期轮到我做饭。我计划在周三做炸猪排。没想到，太太在周二忽然得了感冒，当天晚上喉咙变得干疼。她没有提出来，但我想到接下来几天她应该不适合吃油炸类食物了。于是我毫不犹豫地把原定在周五做的西红柿肉末意大利面提前到周三，而把炸猪排改到周五，希望她到时候可以康复。太太对我的悉心安排非常满意。类似地，主动反应要求法务对公司在日常运营中的意外变化保持敏感，并主动采取相应的法律应对措施。非法律专业的同事可能不具备适当的知识或思维模式去及时意识到业务层面的事件可能导致的法律影响，所以如果法务被动地等待这些同事提出需求再行动的话，可能会错失时机（业务同事很有可能要到问题严重到无法控制时才想起去咨询法务）。

Solution-oriented. It is not always practicable to find the exact ingredients for a particular dish as required in the recipe. For instance, one day I wanted to make a fried shrimp with pumpkin and nuts.  According to the recipe, some dried cranberry should be added to generate a special taste. I could not find dried cranberry in nearby markets. It then came to my mind that dried orange skin also produces a delicate taste, and it is often used as a food ingredient. So I substituted home-made dried orange skin for dried cranberry. It proved a right alternative. In most cases, what an organization expects from its in-house counsel is not “perfect” legal solutions, but “appropriate” ones. Appropriateness is subject to multiple constraints, e.g. minimization of interference into business operations. When solution A is too costly or complicated to be implemented by operation teams, can we offer solution B that achieves a right balance between legal effectiveness and business efficiency?

解决问题。并不是所有时候都能找到与菜谱所要求的一模一样的食材。例如，有一次我想做南瓜核桃炒虾仁。根据菜谱，需要添加一些蔓越莓干来产生一种特殊的风味。但是我在周边的市场都找不到这种材料。我忽然想到陈皮干也可以产生一种特别的香味，而且也是经常被作为调味品入菜的。于是我就用家里自制的陈皮干替代了蔓越莓干。结果证明那是一次成功的尝试。在大多数情况下，公司希望法务提供的并不是“完美”的法律解决方案，而是“合适”的方案。而是否合适则受制于很多限制性因素，比如，要尽可能减少对业务运作的干扰，等等。如果方案A对业务团队来说太过昂贵或过于复杂而难以实施，我们是否能够提出在法律效果和运营效率之间取得适当平衡的方案B呢？

Process conscious.  Cooking is not the equivalent of putting all ingredients into a container on fire at once.  Difference in processes will determine the taste, flavor, texture, and/or appearance of each ingredient, and most importantly, of the entire dish as combination of the ingredients. Thus, to make a meal with intended quality, an appropriate process has to be strictly followed. If you are going to make a fried beef with vegetable, the finished dish is better to have tender beef and green vegetable.  To that end, raw beef should be fried first, with vegetable to be added after the beef turns medium; if it is done in the opposite order, the vegetable will likely turn dark and dry before the beef is done and edible.  In-house counsel’s work is the same, if not more, process sensitive.  For a legal initiative to be successfully implemented, the in-house counsel should pay attention to at least three sets of procedures: the first is the procedure stipulated by law and competent authority, which will determine the legality of the action; another is the formal procedure of the organization, in order to obtain the necessary corporate approval and authorization of the action; last but not least, the informal communication and collaboration rules within the organization, aimed to win support from stakeholders and to identify and overcome hidden obstacles.

重视流程。烹饪不是把全部食材一股脑扔到一口锅里用一把火烧熟完事。流程上的任何差异都可能影响各种食材的色、香、味、质，进而影响到作为食材组合的整道饭菜的品质。因此，为了让饭菜达到预想的品质，我们必须严格遵循正确的流程。比如我们做芥蓝炒牛肉，理想的成品应该是肉嫩菜绿。为了取得这种效果，做的时候应该先炒肉，等五分熟后再放蔬菜一起炒；如果次序相反，结果很可能是肉还没熟透菜就焦黑了。法务工作对流程的敏感度不亚于做菜。要完成一项法律任务，法务至少需重视三套流程：首先是法律和主管机关规定的流程，这些流程将决定法务所要采取的行动的法律效力；其次是公司内部的正式流程，这些流程将决定法务的行动能否获得公司的批准和授权；第三是公司内部的非正式的沟通和协作潜规则，法务需要遵循这些规则以争取利益相关方的支持以及发现并克服隐藏的障碍。

Cost-effective. Home cooking is part of daily family life. It is not meant for luxurious banquets. Cost is an inevitable consideration. Cost-effectiveness means making a meal of the intended quality and quantity at an affordable cost. It can be achieved by smartly choosing where, when and from whom to buy a particular ingredient, by reasonably estimating the quantity needed, and even by efficiently consuming the ingredient. I learnt to use one ingredient for two or even three purposes. If I get a raw chicken, I will separate the meat from the bone, cook the meat with other ingredients, and boil the bone for a soup. For most organizations (except legal service businesses), legal department is a cost center. In-house counsels are expected to provide legal support to the business at costs as low as possible. Consequently, in-house counsels have to do more with less expense. For example, instead of outsourcing the preparation of an entire project contract to a law firm, an in-house counsel can undertake the drafting work and limit the service of the external attorneys to the review of and comment on the draft. A lot of legal fees can be saved in this way.  Another bonus from this arrangement is that the contract reviewed by the external attorneys can be used as a good starting template for a similar project in the future. One ingredient can be used twice!

多做少花。做饭是家庭日常生活的一部分，它的目的不是烧豪华宴席，因而成本是不可回避的考虑因素，性价比是要讲究的。性价比意味着要用可负担的成本做出符合品质和数量期望的饭菜。提高性价比的技巧有很多，包括选择在何地、何时、向谁买食材，合理估计所需的食材斤两，甚至怎样高效地利用食材。我学会了一材两用甚至三用。假设我拿到一只生鸡，我会把肉剔下来，与其它食材搭配做菜，而骨架会被拿去熬制高汤。对于大多数企业（法律服务类企业除外）来说，法务部是费用中心。因此，公司会期望法务用最少的成本向业务部门提供法律支持。其结果就是法务必须干得更多，花得更少。例如，在并购项目中，如果将项目合同的准备工作全部交给外部律师处理，费用会比较高；而如果法务能够承担合同的起草工作，而将外部律师的服务限于对合同稿的审阅和评论，则可以节省不少律师费。这样做还有一个好处：经过外部律师审阅的合同可以作为今后类似项目的很好的起始模板。一鸡两吃！

The above are some thoughts out of my cooking experience. Of course, in-house counseling is more complicated than home cooking. Still, life can teach us more than we imagine. Live a better life, do a better job!

以上是我从下厨经历中获得的一些体会。当然，法务工作要比在家做饭复杂得多。尽管如此，生活还是可以给我们带来一些意想不到的启迪。更好地生活，更好地工作，让我们共勉吧！