Corporate in-house law departments are a fairly recent development within the legal profession, and in the last thirty years they have represented the fastest growing segment of the profession. As with any new development, the early years were spent in defining roles and responsibilities.
Thirty years ago, however, there were very few legally trained persons employed in non-legal activities within the corporate body. The story might have been different had the situation been otherwise.
Today the corporate legal department is in reality an independent law office serving the needs of a single client. The department's basic function is to delineate the legal boundaries within which the management of the corporation is free to exercise its ingenuity in successfully managing the corporate enterprise. At the same time corporate lawyers seek to find ways to legally achieve proper corporate objectives. The department's proximity to corporate activity and management has enabled it to practice "preventive law" in a way simply not possible by outside counsel.
Over the years, however, corporations have grown more complex in structure and government regulatory activities have increased by leaps and bounds. As a consequence, the corporate legal department increasingly has found it difficult to keep on top of every potential problem area that might arise.
Several years ago a general counsel wrote a humorous, but essentially very serious, article for a professional publication on how to develop a "spy system" that would bring possible difficulties to the attention of the legal department. Essentially the problem faced by the corporate lawyers was that of the entire profession, "How do you get laymen to recognize those potential legal problems?"
It has become apparent that by having legally trained persons scattered widely throughout the administrative and managerial activities of the corporation this basic difficulty can be solved. However, there remained the question as to whether these persons would feel themselves in cooperation or in conflict with the members of the legal department. As more and more legally trained persons enter into business management careers, the answer to that second question is developing daily. Perhaps because they have consciously chosen a career other than the practice of law and possibly because spotting potential legal hazards is only a part of their duties and responsibilities, the potential conflicts are simply failing to develop.
This is not to say that there may not have been individual personality differences or that corporate lines of communication at times may not have been faulty resulting in occasional problems. However, taken as a whole, the relationship between the two groups can only be characterized as, "good, and getting better every year."
