[Bundle] SAL-INSEAD Legal Leadership and Strategy Programme 2024

Leadership Challenges and Transitions

We start the programme with an introduction session to make sure everyone is aligned on ‘Why are we here and what can we expect”? We will also discuss the different roles or ‘personas’ participants may have as they come into the programme. Through the discussion of key leadership challenges that participants experience, we can tailor the rest of the sessions based on participants’ needs. After the introduction, we will begin addressing the challenge of transitioning to leadership roles — individually and in one’s organization. Leading effectively requires the capacity to “grow” with one’s organization, adapt flexibly to the changing demands of the company and its task environment, and continue to develop and learn. Importantly, it requires one to master the psychology of power in leadership— the ability to navigate organizational landscapes and lead without formal authority. The ability to do so will help leaders generate value for the organization, their teams, and themselves. We will also discuss about positive workplace culture. How do legal leaders develop a culture that fosters personal and professional growth and psychological safety. Another prevalent issue leaders face today, which we will explore, is how to mentor and lead younger team members (e.g. Gen-Z). Understand their psychology and motivations will help leaders better manage and nurture such talent.

Team Dynamics and Team Decision Making 

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. - Helen Keller
The ability to lead teams and collaborate across business units is fundamental for leaders. Leaders need to be able to draw on the expertise, experience, and insights from diverse individuals to find cutting-edge solutions to overcome the complex challenges in today’s business world. It involves being able to find ways to make teams with diverse expertise work effectively by minimizing interpersonal conflict while simultaneously leveraging the abilities and opinions of the team and its members. Accomplishing both requires that we develop the ability to deal with both the content and the process of collaborative teamwork, and to navigate the difficulties that working in intense work groups inevitably entails.

In this session we will use a team decision-making exercise as a basis for allowing us to explore how groups that are made up of individuals from diverse functions, expertise and backgrounds typically function, and what are some of the common pitfalls of working in such collaborative group situations. This will lead to a discussion on strategies and techniques for optimizing group performance, how to empower others in your group, how to lead by example, and how to align individual and group objectives.

Leadership Decision-Making

To make complex decision through ambiguity, leaders need to engage in critical thinking to make sure that the data they are using is relevant and of high quality. Doing so is particularly challenging when projects are characterized by uncertainty about how to make decisions. Leaders often underperform when they must solve complex problems that deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, andrisk. Facing such situations causes several predictable problems, including ignoring quality indicators of data, using incomplete or missing data to make decisions, make decisions on data which are easier to remember (but not necessarily correct), or make decisions without confidence (or too much confidence).

This session will build on our previous session by addressing how leaders can avoid these problems as they are trying to make the best decisions to lead and navigate an ecosystem with different stakeholders. To evaluate how we do this, we will first complete a decision-making exercise. We will then use this exercies to discuss predictable problems when making decisions under uncertainty and incomplete information, and how leaders can achieve their goals by creating a process that helps them structure the decision-making process. In doing so, we will focus specifically  on the role that biases play in our decision making and how to eliminate these. 

Strategic Thinking for Legal Professionals 

Powering the Organisation's Growth Strategy

Legal companies and corporates continuously strive for growth in their existing markets and new areas of business. In this session, we will explore the fundamental trade-offs and challenges faced when pursuing growth in your business. For law firms, we will focus on growth in existing advisory markets especially related service markets, but also discuss what should guide growth in new service areas and new geographic markets. For legal counsels in companies, will discuss what should guide the growth strategy of the company, and what role legal professionals can play. We will explore growth strategies and best practices that leaders in legal firms as well as corporates can implement to pursue growth in their organization, as well as means to overcome some of the key challenges to growth.

Strategy Execution for Legal Professionals

Firm success depends to a large degree on strategy execution. Legal professionals in law firms or companies are sometimes asked to contribute towards the execution of a growth initiatives, but often struggle to execute them effectively. In this session, we will explore the challenges to successful strategy execution in legal companies. Participants will be introduced to a systematic process of execution and implementing strategic initiatives. We will also discuss various tools to help participants successfully implement strategy and change in organisations.

8.00am - 8.30am

8.30am - 12.30pm

Pursuing M&A in the Legal Industry

The Legal Industry is undergoing mergers and acquisitions, yet such mergers are notoriously difficult and failure rates are high. In this session, participants will learn when and how to engage in M&As in the legal industry. Participant will gain a strategic approach to M&A to understand how they can create value and capture in M&A, how to acquire unique legal capabilities and relationships, as well as how to expand a legal firm’s footprint profitably using acquisitions. We will learn the best practices of successful acquirers, and about pitfalls too. We will also discuss how to structure legal mergers intelligently and how to master the post-merger integration in the legal industry.

2.00pm - 6.00pm

Strategic Partnerships in the Legal Industry

This session focus on strategic partnerships between firms. Participants will learn when law firms and corporates should enter partnerships with other companies to drive revenue, cross-sell services, enter new markets and gain access to new capabilities. Through a partnership simulation, participants will learn about the challenges and problems that emerge in strategic partnership and how to resolve such problems. Participants will also get exposed to best practices of successful partnerships and the learnings from failed partnerships. We will also learn how to make your firm more attractive as a partner-of-choice for others.

Fireside Chat about Legal Technology, AI, and Innovation

Fireside chat with technology entrepreneur or seasoned legal leader about how innovation, AI and legal technology can offer growth and efficiency-enhancing opportunities but also introduce challenges.