Outsource Legal Work or Use Internal Legal Counsel: A Look at YUM! Restaurants International

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What is the best way to recruit talent? Recruiters can bring in job candidates, but that doesn’t mean they’ll bring in the right people for your company. In this interview Dr. Isabel Hacker, Chief Legal Officer Europe FBU for YUM! Restaurants International, speaks about recruitment and retention, especially as it applies to internal counsel versus external legal counsel.



What factors do you consider when deciding whether to outsource legal work to external legal counsel or to use internal legal counsel? How do these factors differ depending on the geographical region?

Expertise. I have to determine how much capacity my people have, but it’s normally based on expertise. I’m UK qualified, I’m German qualified, we have a Russian lawyer, so some of the jurisdiction depends, but if we really don’t know the jurisdiction we’d give it to external counsel.

Read an article on recruiting and retaining featuring Isabel Hacker and Yum! here.

How can you win in the war for recruiting talent? And how can you get the most from legal recruitment agencies?

That’s a good question. Recruiters have no idea what your business is like, so it’s very rare to find good recruiters because they need to have an understanding of the business. Some candidates look good on paper, so you need to make a distinction of a good recruiter and a bad recruiter. When the recruiter knows their client they know what chemistry works. If you find a recruiter that works you stick with that recruiter. I use two firms in parallel. In my experience the best people are from recruiters we know. We put together our job specs ourselves because we know our own business and pass them on to the recruiters because it’s more efficient.

During the economic downturn, as the Chief Legal Officer how did you maintain a high performance environment and how did you coach your staff?

It’s [sometimes] very difficult to keep people motivated. We have a very particular culture that’s unique in Yum! It’s easy to keep people motivated here because we have a good team. The most important thing is communication and keeping them in the loop.

How do you ensure that you can retain key talent, especially now that the economy is in recovery?

I think if you treat people well my experience is they are loyal. Treating people well not only comprises on a daily basis but also for compensation. People depend on their salary, and for some people and extra five-six grand is a tremendous amount. [this starts with] the right bench marking when you hire people and where you see them salary-wise. This gives HR a warning in the recruitment process, and then when you hire someone it doesn’t come down as a surprise.

What are the main leadership challenges that you face?

When the economy is tough and sales are not flowing, things are tougher and you have to think how to get around it, and increase sales, and not lose people. It’s really about being creative about how you can grow your business so you have the sales and you don’t lose the existing talent.

How do you manage your own development alongside the development of your team?

I’m an extremely curious person. If something interests me I get my nose in it. I get a lot of development from my people—their questions push me hard, and I have to sit down and think about it. That really helps you grow. Having a Russian on the team is extremely interesting because [his] approach is a totally different one. And of course I keep myself updated and I get legal updates from various law firms about different countries. I keep up-to-date on the UK, and I teach, which helps me keep up to date on the law. Whatever you teach has to be actual because in law things change. The EU is fast in making new regulations, and it requires lawyers to adapt.

How do you measure the performance of members of your legal team and the team as a whole?

We are very business-focussed so I take time when it comes to appraisals to see what other members think of how they can improve, and 50 percent is my assessment. I want to make sure they’re getting stimulated and not getting bored, and also see how much potential there is. For some people it takes longer to adapt to new things.

Over the next few years, do you think legal departments will move to outsource more legal work to external law firms?

Quite the opposite. The law firms are great, but they don’t sufficiently know your business. For complicated things local expertise is required. We will always have to go through lawyers, but you have to have a very thorough understanding of my business. Everyone in my team has to spend time in the restaurants to get an understanding of what’s going on. An external counsel will never get that.

Interview by Jessica Livingston

Contributor:   Isabel Hacker

Dr Isabel Hacker is the Chief Legal Officer for YUM! Restaurants International. 

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