Sep 19, 2024
2:35:25pm
ssa Walk-on
In-house counsel, WFH 50% of the time
I work for a global heavy equipment manufacturer. As OC Coug noted, when you work with Europe, Americas, Asia-Pacific, you are going to have meetings or calls that start early and others that are late in the day / evening. WFH seems to enable that, and in a very real sense your employer gets more work from you (assuming you are actually trying to work and be productive) on WFH days as compared to office days, particularly if you have a long commute. Fewer distractions at home (I only have one high schooler left at home who drives, so no kid distractions, and my wife works at her work office on the days I WFH, so literally no one home but me), and I can focus on work moreso than at work.

What do I do, specifically? I:
Manage outside lawfirms in product litigation - so I may be spending time in deposition preparation sessions, may be reviewing discovery responses or document reviews in prep for discovery responses, might be in a remote mediation or settlement conference, and often am reviewing and responding to emails on various lawsuits, on the full range of what goes on.
Investigate accidents reported on our product lines - so I may be reviewing accident reports, discussing investigation plans with engineering and my internal claims team, discussing logistics of a field investigation, or dealing with email relating to that.
Management of internal legal & risk management team - so, lots of management stuff, like performance reviews, budgeting, etc., but also trying to keep a team that has members around the world connected in as many ways as possible. Sometimes that is MS Teams meetings for no other purpose than to shoot the breeze with the team (seriously, every Thursday morning its a scheduled meeting), other times just checking in or supporting team members.
Provide advice to engineering on product development - so I might be in meetings discussing new product, what testing is needed, what type of documentation we need to keep on a project, or looking at labels, or maybe doing research on a variety of new standards or laws globally - global emissions regulation is a good example of this - lots of activity on changing emissions regulations (no thank you, California), and we have to research, understand, and then train internally on how to keep up with the changes and stay out of the sights of the EPA
Reviewing marketing literature - I spend a few hours a week reviewing every piece of marketing literature that gets published by my company, to help avoid stupid mistakes in our material (its a real thing, and marketing types - don't be stupid, please!)
I'm boring myself now, but you get the gist. In-house counsel typically have really broad assignments, so there is never ending work to be done (not complaining, as I don't ever have to do any networking or bug friends or people at church for work).
ssa
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ssa
Joined
Jul 6, 2008
Last login
Nov 9, 2024
Total posts
83 (0 FO)
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Sep 19, 1:47pm

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