In early 2025, I wrote about professional life feeling like a raging wildfire. I encouraged in-house lawyers to stop wrestling with what they cannot manage and to focus on navigating forward instead.
That message still holds true. I have since been thinking more about what navigating forward actually looks like day to day. Accepting that the environment is unpredictable is the first step. Performing well inside that unpredictability is the harder one.
The Environment Has Not Calmed Down
If anything, the pace has picked up. You are working in an environment where there are reorganizations, leadership changes, strategy shifting, and conflicting priorities. None of these are new for anyone who has spent time as an in-house lawyer.
The challenge is not the disruption itself. It is overcoming the belief that you must absorb every piece of it personally, without boundaries, without pause, and without acknowledging that the ground keeps shifting beneath you.
Functioning well does not require perfect control over your environment. It requires a steady hand in how you respond when nothing around you is steady.
Work The Problem
I learned about this phrase long before I became a lawyer, but I was only reminded of it recently by a close engineer friend. Work the problem without emotion, and without regard to office politics. I have learned to not fixate on the hypothetical worst-case scenario someone floated in a hallway conversation.
When a reorganization launches and reporting lines change, the question is not why leadership did not loop you in first. The real question is whether your existing contracts, delegations of authority, and compliance obligations still align with the new structure. That is where your attention belongs.
When a new executive arrives with a different risk tolerance, the issue is not that your prior guidance is being second-guessed. The issue is learning what this leader needs from legal and how to recalibrate your approach without abandoning sound judgment.
Strip the situation down to what actually requires action. Start there.
Be Prepared To Pivot
The guidance you gave last Tuesday may not hold by Friday. That is not a failure on your part. It is the nature of this work. Facts and circumstances are constantly in motion. A regulatory interpretation shifts. A key witness recants. A vendor you relied on announces it is closing. A deal term you negotiated gets reopened when a member of leadership raises a concern no one anticipated.
The most effective in-house lawyers I know do not anchor to their original position out of fear that changing course looks like weakness. They review. They reassess. They revise their guidance when the facts call for it.
Consistency matters. Rigidity does not. Knowing where that line falls is part of the judgment you bring to the table.
You Are Dealing With People
This is the part that no legal training fully prepares you for. You are not managing statutes or contract provisions in a vacuum. You are dealing with human beings and human beings are not predictable.
Employees are not predictable. Managers are not predictable. Executives are not predictable. Judges are not predictable.
The employee who seemed perfectly fine during last month’s performance review files a complaint this week. The manager who approved the policy you drafted decides to ignore it when it becomes inconvenient. The judge who signaled a favorable ruling at the hearing issues a decision that goes the other direction entirely.
You cannot script human behavior. You prepare yourself for variability, and you build enough flexibility into your guidance to absorb it.
Check In — Guide — Repeat
This is where the real work happens for in-house lawyers who want to be effective, not just technically correct.
Check in with your business teams regularly, not only when something has already gone sideways; guide them before the decision is made, not after; and when they make decisions you would not have made, guide them through the consequences instead of reminding them you warned them.
People do not come back to the lawyer who says, “I told you so.” They come back to the lawyer who says, “Here is what we do.” Do it again tomorrow and the day after that. Showing up consistently is what builds the trust that makes your guidance worth following when the stakes are highest.
Panic Is Always Optional
Chaos will find you. It will not ask permission. It will not wait for you to finish the project you are already behind on or to take the vacation you have been postponing. When it arrives, you have a choice. You can treat every tremor like a personal crisis and burn through whatever reserves you have, or you can work the problem, adjust your footing, and keep moving.
The in-house lawyers who endure are not the ones who avoid turbulence. They are the ones who have learned to hold steady while everything around them does not. You do not have to stop the fire. You have to keep your head while it runs its course.
Lisa Lang is an accomplished in-house lawyer and thought leader dedicated to empowering fellow legal professionals. She offers insights and resources tailored for in-house counsel through her website and blog, Why This, Not That™ (www.lawyerlisalang.com). Lisa actively engages with the legal community via LinkedIn, sharing her expertise and fostering meaningful connections. You can reach her at lisa@lawyerlisalang.com, connect on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawyerlisalang/).
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