When it comes to mind over legal matters, Jasmine Chen, the legal director (China, India and Mongolia) of Weir Group and a certified national psychological counsellor (level II) in China, explains how psychology can improve the work and well-being of in-house counsel
Legal work is never just about statutes and regulations. At its core, it is about people. As early as 1881, US Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr summed up that “the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience”. Entering the 21st century, legal psychologist Jean R Sternlight and Jennifer Robbenholt also argued that “good lawyers should be good psychologists”.
In the daily work of in-house counsel, beyond researching and interpreting laws, regulations, contract clauses and legal issues, a vast portion of the role involves communicating with people across the organisation and beyond, including colleagues from other departments, clients, suppliers, counterparties in disputes, regulators, external counsel and intermediary institutions.
For legal professionals, the ability to understand others’ decision making processes and master interpersonal communication is a core competency.
A working knowledge of psychology can provide a decisive edge for in-house counsel. It sharpens their ability to navigate through negotiations, internal communication, contract review and dispute resolution. This article explores practical psychological principles and techniques that can be applied in their daily work.
Legal negotiation
In areas such as contracts, investment and disputes, in-house counsel are often tasked with hefty negotiations, which are fundamentally a tug of war of business interests and positions, with legal terms being only one part of the struggle. In-house counsel can draw on the following psychological insights into human thinking and decision making for more favourable outcomes.
Anchoring effect. Identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the anchoring effect refers to people’s tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information or number they encounter (the “anchor”) when making decisions, allowing it to shape subsequent judgements.
In negotiations, this effect can be leveraged by taking the initiative in the first round of a proposal, even if it appears aggressive, as it will set the baseline for the entire discussion. In-house counsel should be prepared to carefully introduce the calculated “legal anchors”, such as compensation figures or contract frameworks, to secure an anchor point and steer the direction of the talks. Conversely, it is equally important to recognise when the counterparty attempts to “drop an anchor” first, and to strategically ignore or reset it where appropriate.
Reciprocity principle. This principle, proposed by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, suggests that human relationships are often built on and maintained by reciprocal exchanges of benefit. This is echoed in the China’s ancient Classic of Poetry: “When one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum.” In most cases, people are inclined to reciprocate what they receive from others.
In practice, in-house counsel can use small, deliberate concessions on a non-critical clause to encourage reciprocal movement from the other side on more significant issues. This approach can be highly effective, provided that concessions are well timed, carefully paced and clearly positioned as meaningful. Unnecessary or hasty concessions should be avoided.
Commitment and consistency principle. Proposed by psychologist Leon Festinger, this principle holds that people have a strong tendency to strive for alignment between their words and actions. Once they have made a commitment or adopted a position, they experience internal and external pressure to remain consistent. Traditional Chinese culture has long reflected this through proverbs like: “A word once spoken cannot be recalled”.
In negotiations, in-house counsel can guide the counterparty to make public commitments early on. This increases the psychological pressure on them to remain consistent when more significant issues arise later. It is advisable to start with relatively minor issues so as to lower the psychological barrier to making commitments.
Emotional awareness and management. Negotiations are not purely rational exchanges. They are also emotional interactions. Effective negotiators remain attentive to emotional signals such as frustration, anxiety or urgency displayed by the other side. Equally important is managing one’s own emotional responses, avoiding impulsive reactions or escalation.
When discussions become tense or adversarial, in-house counsel should maintain a calm, empathetic and listening posture to help both sides calm down. This often helps to restore productive dialogue, break impasses and move negotiations forward.
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Internal communication
In-house counsel are destined to engage in heavy internal communication, persuading business units to accept and comply with risk management strategies. Despite its routine nature, this task often becomes challenging, exposing legal teams to resistance or scepticism from business departments. This is where psychological insights can be useful in effectively conveying legal opinions and strategies to business teams.
Bridging psychological distance. As the saying goes: “One’s position determines one’s perspective”. Business and legal teams operate under different incentives. Business units, driven by performance and revenue goals, may perceive legal risk as abstract, remote and secondary to commercial objectives. Therefore, instead of citing abstract legal terms, in-house counsel can turn them into more relevant case descriptions or scenarios, so that business colleagues can truly “see” the risks and finally accept the legal advice.
At the same time, in-house counsel should try to “wear the shoes” of the business units and understand the trends and challenges in the market. Only in this way can legal opinions be better heard and applied, as both departments will feel the mutual understanding.
Building trust and credibility. In practice, the authority of in-house counsel does not stem from the job title alone, but from credibility built gradually through daily collaboration and communication with business teams.
Overall, good in-house counsel should be more than a legal expert, but a team player working with the business departments. By communicating in a way that they can relate to, the legal team can come up with early-stage compliance strategies in advance to prevent potential risks and even bring more business opportunities in the future.
When business teams view in-house counsel as trusted partners who work alongside them to solve problems, rather than as simple naysayers who do not understand the business, legal advice will carry more weight and create greater value for the company.
Optimising argument structure for business audiences. When explaining risks to business units, in-house counsel should not rely solely on the rigid legal syllogism (statute, analysis and conclusion). By contrast, the SCQA (situation, conflict, question, answer) model is often easier for business teams to understand and apply.
For example, when in-house counsel brief business teams on data-related regulatory risks associated with entering a new country, it is suggested to use the following framework: The company plans rapid market entry (situation); local data protection laws are highly restrictive (conflict); applying the existing operating model could result in significant penalties (question); and the legal team therefore recommends specific data governance measures tailored to both regulatory requirements and business needs (answer).
Psychological well-being
In-house counsel are often overwhelmed by a large volume of legal work and interpersonal communication and, in many cases, face tight deadlines, potential risks and pressing timelines. Such dynamics directly lead to burnout, leaving a heavy toll on people’s mental and emotional health, and may erode the sense of accomplishment in their line of duty. Based on personal experience, the author offers several practical tips for maintaining psychological well-being.
Mitigating decision fatigue. In-house counsel are frequently required to make high-stakes decisions under time constraints. Research in psychology shows that repeated decision making consumes substantial mental energy, leading to diminished decision quality over time, and posing long-term risks to well-being.
Some practical measures can help preserve sound judgement at work, such as standardising routine review processes via templates to reduce repetitive decision making, and implementing “cooling off periods” for complex decisions.
Stress management and empathy fatigue. Due to the nature of their work, in-house counsel often find themselves in conflict ridden and high-pressure environments, making effective stress management essential.
It is recommended that in-house counsel establish stress relief mechanisms suited to their own preferences such as exercise, meditation or cultivating personal hobbies. At the same time, they should remain alert to emotional exhaustion caused by excessive empathy in work-related communications, maintain clear boundaries between work and personal life, and preserve a professional emotional distance.
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