Figureoutable - 0.0 - Looking Glass - Curiosity - Such - Anticipation - Mission

Flocsam Thinking Digest - Posts 11 Jul 2025 to 17 Jul 2025

Seven interesting LinkedIn Posts related to in-house legal (operations or law), that I've enjoyed this week. Ok, plus four ones tucked in at the end.

Small format tweak this week. Following great feedback by Thomas Flinn, I'm trying out a TLDR for each. Let me know what works; whether this change, the digest generally, or topics.

Figureoutable

Always enjoy Scott Brown's Lessons I Learnt in Law. Tara Haig appeared on it a few weeks back and talked through her experience of early leaps and navigating uncertainty.

• TLDR: planning is often less likely to lead to progress than trusting your agility aas you go

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tara-haig-5777b021_were-live-now-with-tara-haig-from-multiverse-ugcPost-7345077002925658112-Y1hA

Looking Glass

Brian Heller highlighted Jason Karp and Stacey Heller's pieces on insurance clauses. US-focused, but still some helpful framing for something that can often make eyes glaze over.

• TLDR: before fighting over insurance clauses, understand what you need.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/briheller_understanding-insurance-clauses-in-contracts-ugcPost-7348702076530577408--1Ly

0.0

The HEINEKEN Company won an award for best ESG report. If you're interested in how to report ESG, it's worth a flick through here. Here's Sonia Thimmiah's post announcing it.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sonia-thimmiah-a9312013_heineken-esg-sustainability-ugcPost-7344285318021365760-Iz6Z

• TLDR: Weaving ESG fully into the annual report really showcases how ESG is embedded in and helps the business strategy.

Curiosity

Seems to be a buzzword among lawyers in 2025. Michael Astle wrote out his take on how to move from “lawyer with knowledge” to “lawyer with insight.”

• TLDR: don't just be aware of the commercial context, nurture curiosity on cause and consequence of it - commercial as well as legal.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/michaeljastle_weve-all-heard-the-phrase-commercial-awareness-ugcPost-7344085548694745089-dwJ2

Such

Always enjoy (and everyone should follow) Amanda Haverstick's posts on simpler legal writing. Here's her giving "as such" a thorough working.

• TLDR: "as such" needs a noun.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amandahaverstick_dearlegalwriter-activity-7350499770982981633-5C6r

Anticipation

A haiku, a video of a gentle stream, and an observation about hitting full year obectives. What more could you want? Kudos to Anna Guo's reply.

• TLDR: Haikus are great, as is knowing how your client's priorities will impact H2.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tfleuriot_a-haiku-about-in-house-counsel-in-july-ugcPost-7350814930599567362-2f9I

Mission

I remain strongly of the view that the word "strategy" is not helpful, and is part of the reason in-house legal transformation keeps spinning its tyres. Here's what I said on that this week.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tfleuriot_legal-team-mission-keep-it-simple-then-do-ugcPost-7351129336776675328-XjoK

• TLDR: a north star to point the function the right way is helpful, but don't overcomplicate it and get travelling.

Services

Starting this week, I'm testing a new rhythm to Flocsam posts. The Flocsam page is where I put those of my perspectives on in-house legal that are adjacent to my Flocsam services.

Would be great to hear what resonates to in-house lawyers. The rhythm is:

• Thematic ideas for Flocsam deliverables (this week: Compliance & Governance)

• Lifecycle costs (this week: Design phase)

• Example of a smallest / simplest impactful step (This week: Procurement)

• FAQs (This week: on the Two Days thing)

Two Days?

Some stuff I reckon your in-house legal team and I can lock in such a time period:

• Template

• Playbook

• Pilot for AI or technology

• RFP for vendors

• Policy

• Process

Not all of those in the same two days. We'd pick one thing. The smallest impactful step that delivers immediate business priorities as well as a foundation for scaleability.

The trick is to pick the right deliverabe with the right scope. How about a no obligation chat. I'll help you if I can bring value. I'll tell you if I can't.

Flocsam is a consultancy set up by Tom Fleuriot, helping in-house legal operations evolve quickly. It starts with a discovery call. Book it through my profile. Let's move fast and fix things.

Posts selected in this digest were chosen by Tom and individuals shouldn't be seen to have endorsed Flocsam. Even though Flocsam does bring amazing value to companies' legal operational solutions, obviously, and these people are very clever and would probably agree if they had worked with me (which they haven't).

Marmots.