While the new “Barbie” movie has become a box office phenomenon, I’m incredibly impressed with the longevity and ever-growing popularity of the world’s most famous doll.

Of course, Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the toy company Mattel, Barbie was launched in 1959 and it was created by American businesswoman Ruth Handler.

Incredibly, Barbie has been around for six decades – and it continues to be at the forefront of our culture.

In fact, Barbie is like fine wine which keeps getting better with age. I have difficulty identifying other similar iconic brands that have continued to be highly relevant for so long and have also flourished over time.

Regardless of your views about Barbie, there’s a lot that legal and business professionals can learn from Barbie and Mattel about how to sustain and grow your brand over a very long horizon.

So, here’s some lessons learned from Barbie:

🎀 Constantly Reinvent Yourself: Barbie is no longer just a doll with clothes and accessories. Barbie has adapted over time to include a wide range of branded goods such as books, apparel, cosmetics, video games and audiovisual content – and there are many other areas where we see Barbie.

🎀 Constantly Market Yourself: The Barbie “Marketing Machine” is currently on full display with the rollout of the new Barbie movie. “Barbiecore” and “Barbiemania” are unavoidable nowadays!

🎀 Be Relevant to Everyone: There seems to be a Barbie doll that almost every kid and adult can appreciate and identify with. For instance, there’s even a New York Yankees Barbie (picture above) that I adore as a lifelong Yankees and baseball fan.

🎀 Grow Your Total Addressable Market (TAM): Whether it’s my 6 year old niece or my 103 year old Grandma who both love Barbie, there’s no doubt that Barbie’s TAM of customers, partners and vendors have grown across generations and geographies across the globe.

🎀 Stay Strong & Resilient: Like lots of brands, Barbie has had her ups and downs over the years. She has been involved in lawsuits, parodies, tough competition, years of slow sales, etc…However, Barbie remains persistent and keeps driving forward with strength and resiliency.

🎀 Remain True to Yourself: While there’s no doubt that Barbie has transformed over a long period of time, at Barbie’s core she is very much the same doll from her early days – manufactured to approximately 1/6 scale and 11.5 inches tall.

What else can we learn from Barbie which is relevant in Corporate America?

Sharing this interesting article from this week’s The Economist about the power of being concise and redundant in our communications which I believe is instructive for in-house counsel.

Here’s my favorite quote from the article which is a great best practice for in-house lawyers when they communicate with clients: “The advice to keep it trim is still good counsel. Blaise Pascal, a French author of the 17th century, once apologised for a long letter by saying: “I have not had time to make it shorter.” Keeping things tight can be hard work for the writer, but it saves time for the reader, at least up to a point. Make your prose as lean as necessary to keep your reader reading—but not more.”

In my experience as a corporate counsel, I have learned that it’s super important to communicate in a succinct, clear and impactful fashion with my clients. Here’s a few things I do:

☑️ Keep your email communications to your clients no longer than the size of your laptop screen.

☑️ If you have created a 5 page memo for your clients, make it no more than a 2 pager.

☑️ If you are asked to deliver a presentation, deliver it it under 15 minutes. I know of few business clients who want to hear a lengthy presentation from a lawyer (I know that I don’t)😀.

If we communicate with too much complexity and legalese, we will simply lose the attention of our clients and they will tune us out.

However, when we do communicate with our clients, legal teammates and others, it is also important to overcommunicate and be redundant when needed to stress our key points – especially as we live in a digital first world where people are constantly multitasking and we are competing for the attention of our work colleagues.

When I have important points to stress to my clients and legal colleagues like “compliance is a non-negotiable” or “get the legal team involved early and often,” I may sound like a broken record. However, I’m also hoping that my repetition in communications in these key areas will be remembered, learned and embraced over time.

What are your best practices as an in-house counsel when you communicate with your clients?

Nowadays, there’s so many legal technology providers to choose from for legal departments and law firms. Trying to select the right legal technology provider for the needs of your organization is not an easy task.

March 2023 seems to be #LegalTech month for the legal industry with the American Bar Association (ABA) TechShow in Chicago and LegalWeek in New York City.

In recognition of these two important legal industry events, I recently wore my vintage 1980s era Chicago White Sox uniform (since the ABA TechShow was in the Windy City) and produced my #3Strikes video ⚾️ which lawyers can use as a “mini” checklist on these 3 top areas for lawyers to carefully consider as they evaluate legal technology solutions for their legal departments and law firms:

✅️ Earn Trust: Trust cannot be claimed. Instead, trust must be earned. Take the time to clearly understand what a technology solution is all about (and what it is not about). Make sure that a provider offers you suitable customer case studies and references. Gain clarity on how a provider properly secures your vitally important data. Bottom line, make sure that your technology provider is constantly earning your trust!

✅️ Drive Business Outcomes: How does a legal tech provider enable you to achieve real business outcomes? For instance, will a provider’s solution help you achieve cost savings? How does a provider’s solution enable you better serve your clients? Will a provider’s solution help you share information more freely and break down organizational silos?

✅️ Technology Ease of Use: Historically, lawyers have been slow at adopting technology. Lawyers will be more willing to use technology that is simple and easy to use. Lawyers will be less willing to use technology that is complex and difficult to use. People and organizations will only derive benefits from technology if it actually used and consumed.

Best of luck in evaluating and selecting a legal technology provider!

One of my favorite things to do in my spare time is to read books about athletes as they provide great lessons for our personal and professional lives.

I recently finished the book entitled “The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson” by Jeff Pearlman.

It’s an excellent book as it takes us through the life and times of the greatest two sport athlete who excelled at professional football and professional baseball. Of course, I was a fanboy of Bo Jackson back in the day as evidenced by his autographs from my sports memorabilia collection in the pictures below.

The book details Bo Jackson’s journey from Bessemer, Alabama to Auburn University to Minor League Baseball to Major League Baseball with the Kansas City Royals to the National Football League with the Los Angeles Raiders (currently the Las Vegas Raiders) to his devasting football injury to his comeback in Major League Baseball with the Chicago White Sox.

While Bo Jackson was an incredibly gifted and a once in a lifetime athlete who was also at the center of Nike’s highly successful “Bo Knows” marketing campaigns, I think his greatest triumph and lesson for us was his incredible resiliency.

Against all odds, Bo Jackson was able to overcome a speech impediment and was able to return to the baseball diamond after he sustained a debilitating injury which required a hip replacement.

IMO, Bo Jackson’s greatest gift to his legions of fans and the public wasn’t his iconic touchdown runs or his mammoth home runs or his world-class speed or his incredibly strong arm that threw out daring baserunners – all of which can still be watched nowadays on YouTube.

No, his greatest gift to us was to underscore the importance of #grit, #perseverance and #resiliency. Thank you Bo Jackson for being a great role model! 

As many legal organizations are increasingly focused on appropriate resource allocation and relentless prioritization of work, it’s important for senior leaders in legal departments to thoughtfully delegate work.

Presidents Day was earlier this week and I think we would all agree that being a President of the United States is a highly challenging job!

Of course, a critical responsibility for any President is for he/she to effectively delegate important work to his/her team. Likewise, senior legal department or law firm leaders who have the privilege to manage people also need to effectively delegate work to their teammates.

Please check out my latest 3Strikes video as I provide these 3 tips when delegating work to members of your team:

👍Just Do It: As we look for opportunities to work smarter, demonstrate trust in your teammates by delegating work and opportunities to them.

✋️ Provide a Great “Hand-Off”: Set your teammates up for success when delegating work by providing them with important background information and coaching.

✈️ Offer “Air Cover”: We provide legal guidance on complex matters and our advice may be challenged by others. Always be sure to have your legal teammate’s “back” when you trust them to counsel your clients.

Effective delegation of legal tasks and activities enables your team to deliver higher impact legal services and provides opportunities for your teammates to grow!

I was saddened to learn about the passing of legendary baseball broadcaster and player Tim McCarver yesterday.

When I was a kid, I wrote a letter to McCarver asking for his autograph on my 1973 and 1976 baseball cards in the pictures above and below. McCarver generously obliged – which is an example of how he tirelessly served baseball fans as a player, leading broadcaster and game ambassador.

In memory of the great Tim McCarver, here’s some lessons for us to learn from him and which we can apply to the workplace:

⚾️ Reinvent Yourself: Early in his baseball career, McCarver helped lead his St. Louis Cardinals teams to two World Championships. As his career progressed, he transitioned from being a starting catcher to a back-up catcher. When his career ended, McCarver embarked on an outstanding broadcasting career which resulted in his induction into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. McCarver’s ability to embrace change throughout his career is exemplary for us in Corporate America.

⚾️ Relationships Matter: During his player career as a catcher, McCarver built deep relationships with two outstanding and highly influential baseball pitchers: Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton as he was their “personal” catcher. These close relationships with “Gibby” and “Lefty” certainly helped prolong McCarver’s career on the playing field. Whether you are on the baseball diamond or in Corporate America, relationships with the right people matter in your career.

⚾️ Transparency: As a broadcaster, McCarver was not shy in offering his open and honest opinions about a game to his audience. In fact, some baseball players refused to shake McCarver’s hand because they didn’t like him voicing his opinions. McCarver’s authenticity as a broadcaster is something that we need to see more from leaders in Corporate America.

⚾️ Providing Insights & Clarity: One of McCarver’s strengths as a broadcaster was his unique real baseball world insight that he constantly shared with his audience. He also delivered that insight with great clarity so that non-baseball fans could easily understand what was happening during a game. The ability for corporate leaders to drive clarity with their teams and to share thoughtful perspectives to help their teammates be successful is critical.

⚾️ Be a Storyteller: When you listened to McCarver during a game telling story after story after story, you felt that you were hanging out with your close uncle. Storytelling is an increasingly important skill for success in Corporate America and McCarver was a supreme storyteller.

⚾️ Excellence > Longevity: McCarver played baseball in four decades from 1959 to 1980. After his playing career he called a then-record 23 World Series and 20 All-Star games. He was an outstanding ambassador for our National Pastime for generations of baseball fans. McCarver exemplified excellence and constantly delivered high value to the fans – which is also a recipe for sustained success in Corporate America.

Rest in peace Tim McCarver.