Tag: Strategy

Architecture of Deals

Duc TrangLast year my team of lawyers had our annual offsite meeting in Athens, Greece. Besides the sightseeing and team bonding, we also got schooled … by Duc Trang. As I wrote at the time, Duc Trang a senior legal exec

now trains lawyers and other professionals in business acumen and is due to come out with a new book about the Architecture of Deals and how to design transactions. But for our Athens adventure, Duc gave us a session on how to analyze a business’ competitive position in order to make better strategic decisions. along to run a training session on how to analyze a business’ competitive position in order to make better strategic decisions.

Duc has just published Architecture of Deals: Strategies for Transactional Lawyering about helping transactional lawyers like myself and those in my team become more effective at what we love doing: helping our clients meet their business objectives. You can read more about the book here.

His European book launch is in London this week, but let’s see if we can get him to come to Madrid later in the year.

When in Greece, Know that You Know Nothing

Greece 2

I expend a great deal of hot air preaching both here in this blog and in the classes I teach to young professionals about how important it is for lawyers, especially in-house counsel, to understand their client’s business, industry and strategy.

Two months ago, my team together with my manager Jackson Pek held our annual team building event in Athens, Greece. Jackson brought along two senior GC’s (in experience not age), Duc Trang and Evangelos Apostolou. Duc now trains lawyers and other professionals in business acumen and is due to come out with a new book about the Architecture of Deals and how to design transactions. But for our Athens adventure, Duc gave us a session on how to analyze a business’ competitive position in order to make better strategic decisions.  I hate to use the term, but it was “awesome”.

When you are the one in front of the group doing all the talking, you often forget that there is a lot of value in being the one who is listening and learning. So it was very humbling to learn from Duc. His very simple approach to assessing a company’s relative competitiveness enables lawyers (and other corporate support functions) to better engage with their clients as more effective business partners.

In today’s corporate world, HR departments spend a lot of time building up their employees’ important soft skills, but at the end of the day, little effort is made to teach business acumen. I can’t stress enough how much value legal teams get from the sort of business skills training that Duc offers, and he has a unique ability to put it into the context of what we lawyers do in our every day roles. In fact, by the end of our first session, we were already analyzing our own internal client’s competitive position and brainstorming about improved strategic approaches and better ways to focus our support. Again, it was “awesome”.

Then there was the icing on the cake. My team and I got to hang out in Athens with Jackson, Duc and Evangelos, and I got to pick their more seasoned brains with lots and lots of questions about how to be a more effective business partner and a better manager for the amazing team I work with.

It reminded me of Socrates’ “the only thing I know is that I know nothing”. Efharisto, there is always something to learn and luckily someone to learn it from.