Legal practice as part of the business strategy
The firm Lassori Advogados understands legal practice as a means of contributing strategically to clients and their businesses, ensuring technical rigor and ethical conduct. It is in this aspect – of a strategic outlook – that the firm’s work resembles the octopus. Hence the creation of the article The Octopus Lawyer.
Available on Netflix, the South African film My Octopus Teacher, produced by Craig Foster and winner of the 2021 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, portrays the producer’s learning as he daily follows the life of an octopus (a female octopus, in fact) over 365 days.
In the documentary, the octopus’s decentralized intelligence is portrayed, spread across its thousands of sensors, its intuitive capacity to perceive the arrival of danger in advance, its adaptability to the environment to protect itself from predators, and its self-sacrifice for the benefit of the next generations.
It may seem like a coincidence, but this is how the work of Lassori Advogados functions. The professionals enter the client like an octopus, permeating its business, attentive to detect risks, identify opportunities and deeply understand the scenario of each area within the company.
The octopus metaphor helps to explain in an illustrative way, without legalese, the role of the lawyer as an important partner for the sustainable growth of the business and with a long-term commitment. That is why we say that “more than lawyers, we are strategic allies”.
The octopus lawyer
And what are the attributes of the octopus that Lassori employs in its work methodology?
The first is decentralized intelligence, because when the firm takes on a new client or when it encounters a new situation, the first move is to dive into each area of the company. Like the tentacles of an octopus, which have more than 1,500 sensors acting independently in the complete monitoring of the environment in which it is inserted.
This is how the firm is able to take a snapshot of the company exactly as it is at this initial moment. In its legal, commercial, management and economic aspects. And this overview is part of the work of a strategic legal department, allowing a better understanding of problems and the identification of opportunities.
The second attribute is the mapping of dangers, since it is necessary to deeply understand the areas simultaneously and directly, and this also contributes to quickly identifying legal and business risks. Just as the octopus foresees dangers and adopts preventive measures, this mapping allows a strategic plan to be developed with legal solutions analyzed and implemented jointly with the client.
The third attribute, in turn, is adaptability to the environment, since, just as the octopus has a capacity to adapt to the environment, the professionals of Lassori insert themselves into the culture and reality of each client. For this, in addition to continuous dedication to legal study, there is a concern to broaden knowledge not only in the legal area, but also in the areas of economics, administration, management and business.
This continuous training broadens the vision, transforming the lawyer into a strategic lawyer and resulting in more proactive support for the growth of clients.
And, lastly, the fourth attribute is sustainability for the next generations, since the firm works, just like the octopus, for the next generations of the client, developing the company’s succession planning to ensure that the succession is carried out without ruptures of business or management.
Well, at first glance, it may seem meaningless to compare a lawyer with an octopus, but this is a way to explain in an uncomplicated manner the work of the strategic legal department, the great global trend in the area in recent years.
Pillars of the strategic legal department
The strategic legal department operates under the pillars of efficiency, high quality of legal services and cost reduction. And without the multidisciplinary knowledge of the team of lawyers, the pillars do not stand. This is because efficiency requires that the legal recommendation be effective for the concrete case, since in the areas of advisory law, negotiations and strategic litigation there is no commoditization. And, certainly, quality is essential, since law is an activity of means and not of results and, therefore, the path traced to achieve the result must be meticulously planned.
In this context of the parallelism between the practice of law and the octopus, due to its diversity of activities and easy adaptability, the firm has invested in technology for years and, for this reason, was not shaken by the pandemic, since in the abrupt migration to the home office that was imposed by the health authorities, the professionals had the individual equipment and resources necessary to work remotely.
Finally, even though there is still a certain prejudice in the legal area when addressing costs and strategic planning, yes, the lawyer’s work must be organized in such a way that there is optimization of time and no expenditure of time on repetitive tasks, so that processes are automated and the controllership indicates the productivity indices of the professionals in order to align demand and idleness. And all of this in order to reduce the firm’s costs in an intelligent and efficient way and, as a consequence, to be able to charge attorney’s fees that fit within the client’s budget.
Lassori Advogados understands that the legal profession has been undergoing intense transformation in recent years and the pandemic has only accelerated the latest steps, moving from a purely intellectual activity to becoming a strategic area of the company that demands multidisciplinary professionals with high adaptability.
The legal department does not have to be an internal area of the company. It can be composed of specialist partners. Attuned to this trend, Lassori Advogados supports its clients along this path.
The main benefits that the client obtains by counting on Lassori as a strategic partner are: an experienced legal team, increased legal efficiency and improvements for the business.
Thus our company contributes in an agile and effective way with clients, whether by supporting the growth of the business or by developing succession planning. More than lawyers, we are strategic allies.
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