Q:
Describe your background and the path you took to becoming in-house counsel.
A: I started at a large Cincinnati firm straight out of law school. I moved in-house for a client of the firm after about 8 years and have remained in-house ever since. The in-house experience has been rewarding and varied over the last 24 years. I have worked for a Fortune 500, publicly traded steel company, a private equity led construction products company, and, finally, a family-owned residential homebuilder. I had the good fortune to be General Counsel at the last 2 in-house companies and was able to establish a legal department from scratch at Fischer Homes. As time went on and I gained experience, I stayed in-house because of the ability to work for a single client and have a greater impact on the business side of things.
Q: How and when do you use outside counsel? In what kinds of matters?
A: For me, outside counsel serve as an extension of my legal department team. As I train new attorneys to work in-house, I focus on finding the "80% answer" quickly and accurately. Understanding the facts colleagues are sharing and the issues they raise helps you provide directionally accurate guidance at the speed of business. Sometimes that is good enough (e.g., "that makes sense, just make sure to be alert for A, B and C" or "deviating from our usual contracting process with this vendor creates risk we aren't ready to take"). In other cases, a deeper dive is needed. That is typically where outside counsel comes in. In my experience, the time and effort to get to an 80% answer is usually about the same as getting the last 20% buttoned up. Most in-house counsel have neither the bandwidth nor expertise to do this, so outside counsel is a key resource to employ.
Q: What kind of work does your company do? Do you focus on specific sectors, states or regions?
A: Fischer Homes is a top 30 residential homebuilder in the U.S. After starting in a garage in Northern Kentucky and eventually moving across the river into Cincinnati, Fischer Homes counterintuitively expanded during the Great Recession into Columbus, Indianapolis and then into Atlanta. After a brief lull, expansions into Louisville, Dayton, St. Louis and the Gulf Coast of Florida have occurred during my tenure. As I wind down towards retirement on May 1st, additional expansion opportunities are being evaluated. The responsibility of providing such a huge investment to our customers, and the "canvas on which their life will be painted" is not taken lightly. Whether the customer is a first-time homeowner, a step-up buyer, an empty-nester or anywhere in-between, the importance of the process cannot get lost in profit and loss statements. We recognize and embrace that responsibility with our founder's motto: "Promise only what you can deliver and deliver what you promise."
Q: How can outside counsel best serve you and your company?
A: The skills most highly valued in the outside counsel we repeatedly return to include: listening, responsiveness, and initiative. I try to begin each relationship with a new attorney by explaining that I want and need teammates I hire as outside counsel to question everything we do and ask whether it can be done more efficiently, accurately, quickly or cheaply. I want to leverage work outside counsel does to make my business better over the long haul. A classic example is via an After Action Report on concluded litigation. After a long, tough case, both the attorney and the client are usually happy to move on to other items. If both parties do so and don't perform a root cause analysis, you are certain to be back there again in short order. However, if the costs of that dispute or litigation can be amortized across the next 100 or 1,000 similar situations you can show value. Fact patterns that either don't turn into litigation or are at least much more manageable if they do, allow costs to be converted to investments in the future.
Q:
What advice would you give to outside counsel about how to meet or even exceed their client's expectations?
A: Knowing when to refer a matter outside your own firm is a tricky skill for attorneys to learn. All too often I have been referred to an attorney in another department by the relationship attorney only to find out that person isn't the right fit, and the relationship attorney knew it when the referral was made. The desire to keep revenue and, if applicable, billing credit within the firm is significant, but doing this can be shortsighted. Hopefully, as the relationship attorney, you have learned what will and won't work with a client. A longer lens allows the client to see that you put their needs first by making the right referral to an expert that handles the matter capably and efficiently. Instead of being concerned about lost revenue or the referral attorney poaching the client, be confident that you are providing the best services to a client that you intend to have a long term relationship with. For me, that has always cemented the relationship rather than threatening it.
Q: What experience do you have using a third-party neutral to mediate construction disputes?
A: Construction disputes tend to be good candidates for early neutral mediation because of the complexity and amounts involved. Selecting a neutral that will understand the technical aspects of the case, while still being strong enough to communicate to both parties the downside of continuing down the adversarial path, can be difficult. Reliance on feedback from other construction professionals, typically within the ABA Forum, has always been a practice of mine. It has worked out repeatedly over the years. That said, make sure the other side is committed to both the mediation process and the timing of the process before you get started. Without that, you can sometimes feel like you are "pushing rope."
Q: What do you plan on doing after retiring?
A: The non-serious answer, after 32 years of practicing law, the last 24 in-house, is nothing! Of course, I want to stay active, particularly with the Forum, for both professional and psychosocial reasons. One of the great things about the practice of law is that "retirement" can be planned as more of a dimmer switch on a light rather than an on/off switch. I have formed an LLC and plan to do some very occasional work for former employers at first. Beyond that, I am exploring the fractional law space with an emphasis on temporary or part-time general counsel work and construction mediation/arbitration as well. For the most part, I am just "retiring" from going to the office every day.
