Recruiting and Sculpting the Best In-House Legal Team: Lessons from the WNBA

Navigating a complex legal landscape is impossible without the right team in your corner. For modern general counsel, team building is no longer just about hiring—it’s about strategic design. In this article, we break down the essentials of building a premier legal department. We’ll cover how to identify your ideal talent profile, strike the perfect balance between business and technical lawyers, and strategically integrate outside counsel to round out your team.

Recruiting talent

There was a lot of drama surrounding the recent 2026 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) draft and which player would be selected as the number 1 pick. Olivia Miles is an elite point guard who brings the ball up the court and runs an offense with lots of flair. An elite guard with a high shooting percentage, a quick release, and consistency, she was widely viewed as one of the most polished offensive players in the class. Many scouts and draft picks predicted Miles as the number 1 pick, but there was a great uproar on social media and sports media when the Dallas Wings selected Azzi Fudd as the number 1 pick instead.

Dallas’ decision, though, is not shocking when you assess its existing team and immediate needs. The team did not need a point guard. Dallas already had one of the top-ranked point guards (and one with flair) in the country in Paige Beukers. Looking at the team as a whole in 2025, they struggled with offensive consistency, ranking among the lowest-scoring teams in the league. The team needed someone who could guarantee them consistent baskets every game under Beukers’ leadership. Fudd and Beukers played together for many years in college; they had built-in chemistry. Fudd was the missing piece that Dallas needed and has proven to be so during the 2026 season.       

Taking the Dallas Wings’ approach, ask yourself: What type of lawyer would really improve your legal department’s efficiency? Is it a tax lawyer? A regulatory lawyer? Rarely do GC’s need in-house litigators if they are using outside counsel for active disputes, but would a litigator help manage caseloads? Before hiring the best lawyer from a top-ranked firm, consider your needs and existing resources to identify the missing puzzle pieces.

GCs often face a fundamental question: Should you prioritize hiring business-savvy lawyers who understand your company’s strategic goals, or technical experts with deep subject-matter expertise? The answer depends on your company’s stage of growth, industry, and legal needs. A good in-house attorney does not just give the client the “legal” or technical answer, but should be able to align legal strategies with business objectives and conduct risk assessments for different business approaches.

Early-stage companies often benefit from lawyers who can handle a wide range of issues or at least issue-spot and triage issues to outside counsel who specialize in different areas. As the company grows, the need for in-house specialists in areas like employment law, intellectual property (IP), or M&A becomes more pronounced.

Sculpting players

Once you have the right players on the roster, you must focus on sculpting them into the team you need. Because in-house counsel must understand business operations to advise various departments on legal risks or options, counsel must understand the business and each department’s role within it.

The first few months of any in-house counsel’s tenure should be spent observing meetings, meeting with company stakeholders, and understanding the company’s products, services, and mission. This investment will better enable in-house counsel to balance “the legal” with “the business,” possibly the most important function of any legal department.

If there are technical gaps that are costly to address with outside counsel but could easily be filled with additional training, then encouraging the in-house legal team to develop cross-functional skills or attend continuing legal education programs to build specific skills is critical.

While legal departments are often tasked with advising on employment law issues, they are not immune to HR challenges themselves. In fact, we rarely see in-house teams properly documenting performance failures or confronting personality differences like we encourage all departments to do. Internal disputes can damage the credibility of the legal department and erode trust within the organization. Just as HR consults the GC, the GC should consult HR.

Finally, develop clear protocols for how the legal department handles disputes, including guardrails that identify when matters should be escalated to outside counsel or an independent third party, such as for workplace investigations or other sensitive issues. These protocols are an important part of building an effective legal team because they establish clear roles, empower in-house attorneys to recognize when outside expertise is required, and remove the perception that seeking help reflects poor judgment.

These protocols also encourage legal leaders to think proactively about their outside counsel relationships, identifying trusted advisors before a crisis arises rather than scrambling to find help in the middle of one. Too often, we see situations where outside counsel is brought in too late, after the GC or other in-house attorneys have become fact witnesses or otherwise compromised their ability to provide objective legal advice. Building a team that knows when to collaborate externally is just as important as hiring talented lawyers internally.

Conclusion

For GCs, building an effective legal team, managing internal challenges, and knowing when to engage outside counsel are critical to the success of the legal department and the organization as a whole. By striking the right balance between business and technical lawyers, addressing performance and conduct issues with HR support, and proactively planning for scenarios involving conflicts of interest, GCs can position their legal departments as strategic partners to the business.