Bridging the Divide: The Essential Collaboration Between Legal and Financial Advisors for Effective Business Solutions

Ross Meadows, Partner, Oury Clark

The PR is right, promising to deliver what we know GCs and in-house counsel want from their advisors. But does this always happen in reality? In short, not nearly often enough. Particularly when the advice needed crosses a number of different professional disciplines, such as finance and accounting. How good are professionals at joining the dots? Most of the time not good at all. Whereas lawyers in different legal disciplines may collaborate well to deliver legal solutions, too often they will pass the buck to the in-house counsel to check in with their accountants as to any tax or other financial ramifications. And I’m sure all readers will have witnessed that most unhelpful tussle between professional teams on occasion, the accountants asking for the external lawyers to re-think their legal approach to avoid a tax or financial downside, only for the lawyers to push back and say it would be dangerous to compromise on the liability issues, leaving the in-house lawyer caught in the middle between them, not knowing who’s advice should take precedence. It is then left to the client to go back and forth between the two professional teams which wastes time (their own and that of their two teams of expensive advisors), and generally causes them a massive headache from all the frustration. Is this delivering on the promise of a commercial approach attuned to the needs of the business? No, of course not. Quite the opposite.