The Legal Mind Revolution – an interview with its author, Antoine Henry de Frahan

Effective risk management is perhaps the most important challenge for company lawyers today. It is a basic prerequisite for becoming a true business partner. It is the ‘balancing stick’ for company lawyers ‘dancing on the slack tightrope’ between protecting the business and achieving business objectives. It is the key to more efficient and effective management of your (scarce) time.

Unfortunately, it is not something we learn during law school. That is why this topic is always on the agenda of our Legal Soft Skills Academy (link) where Antoine Henry de Frahan, Associate Professor at EDHEC Business School, consultant, author and speaker, teaches the concepts and methodologies of the risk mindset.

This summer, Antoine has published the ‘The Legal Mind Revolution’ handbook. It’s a must-read and game changer as it unleashes a 'true' revolution by enabling [you/us/each of us/everyone/members] to grow into real business partners through empowering [your/the] [evolution/transition] from being a risk identifier to a strategic risk navigator. With its clear storytelling, practical framework of 3 different key mindsets and useful examples, the handbook pushes you to see beyond the legal lens and to create opportunities where others only see problems.

At the occasion of its publication, we invited Antoine for an interview:

Why should a company lawyer read “The Legal Mind Revolution”?

I asked more than a dozen leading heads of legal departments to review my book’s manuscript, and most have said that the book is a “must-read” for all company lawyers. I think the main reason is that the book deals with a reality that every company lawyer faces each day, but that is never discussed in an open and structured way. The book also provides a methodology for operating like a business partner. There is a lot of talk out there about becoming a business partner, but it often remains pretty superficial and incantatory. My book provides a clear framework to think like a true business partner.

Why did you write this book? What was your incentive for doing so?

In many companies, there remains a gap between the advice and support that business managers expect from their lawyers and what they actually get. Business managers want to receive clear, effective, practical guidance and what they get is often, in their opinion, too ambiguous, indecisive, and conservative. Company lawyers are convinced they are doing their duty and protecting their company against dangerous legal risks, but their risk analysis is often flawed.

At the outset, I started to address this issue in my writing skills course for lawyers. However, after a while, it became apparent that it was not just a matter of writing style. It’s a fundamental mindset issue. I started giving workshops on the necessary mindset shift and how lawyers should and can complement their usual operating model, the rule-based mindset, with the risk-based and the ethics-based mindset. These workshops have generated a lot of interest and many aha! moments for the participants. That convinced me that I should put these ideas in writing to reach a broader audience.

Why do you think the risk-based mindset is less known among legal professionals? How should it be integrated into our legal education?

Law students go through five or more years of legal education without hearing the word “risk” one single time. A formal introduction to risk management is absent from the curriculum. They are educated 100% within the rule-based mindset. When they start practicing law, they get exposed to the necessity of assessing risks, but the majority believe that they can do it without learning as if risk analysis and risk management were innate abilities. They are not. The concepts and methodologies of the risk mindset have to be learned.

How could it be integrated into legal education? Primarily by case studies and exercises where students are requested to answer a client’s question. Then, their way of reasoning can be examined and discussed; they become aware of the limitations of their current way of thinking and discover another approach. To their big surprise, they see that their final conclusion is quite different and sometimes the opposite of their initial response. Once you master it, the risk-based mindset is very powerful.

How can a company lawyer combine different mindsets to optimise a better outcome?

Combining the three mindsets is straightforward when you have learned each of them. You become like a good tennis player who can alternate between playing forehand, backhand and volley. You need to learn what each mindset can do, when it can be used effectively, and what are its limitations. My book provides an overview of how each of the three mindsets flows into and combines with the others.

The “The Legal Mind Revolution” by Antoine Henry de Frahan is available on Amazon and at www.frahan.com/shop/p/thelegalmind. Price: 25 € + shipping.