SIGNAL OR NOISE · THE LOAN · PROTECTION
A borrower asks the bank to release its warehouse from security so it can sell it, saying the proceeds will 'strengthen the balance sheet'. The warehouse is a third of the bank's security.
// ← EVERY SEATTHE FUNCTIONS
Every floor · The machinery
Legal Counsel (In-House)
Advises the bank on what it can do, drafts and negotiates what it signs, and manages what goes wrong.
BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
// 01 — WHAT A LEGAL COUNSEL DOES
In-house work is advice under time pressure rather than opinions at leisure: facility and security documentation, product terms, regulatory change, disputes and enforcement. The client is a business that has already half-decided, which makes the skill giving a usable answer rather than a comprehensive one.
// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE
From private practice, usually with banking and finance or regulatory experience.
// 03 — WHAT THE INTERVIEW ASKS
These are the shapes the round takes, not a question bank — banks phrase them differently and the wording is never the point.
- 01The business wants to do this on Friday. Your advice?
- 02How do you give advice when the law is unsettled?
- 03What makes security enforceable, and what quietly does not?
- 04How do you say no to someone who does not report to you?
- 05Talk me through a negotiation you did not win.
- 06How much risk is it your job to remove?
What the panel is listening for. Commercial judgment: whether you can price a legal risk rather than only describe it, and answer in a form the business can act on.
The finance, technology and operations quiz has no question for this seat yet. Its five were asked for the software engineer, financial accountant, operations analyst, procurement manager and people partner seats, in the same block, and the temperament they score is the one this panel scores too.
Take the quiz →// 04 — ONE QUESTION, WORKED
QWhat makes security enforceable, and what quietly does not?
A strong answer covers the formal points — the right party with authority, properly executed, the secured property described so it can be identified, the obligations secured stated widely enough, registered in time and in the right order for priority — and then the quiet ones: a company that has changed its name or structure since, a guarantor who was not advised, a mortgage over land the borrower does not own, a supplier's earlier registration over the goods. Then the practical test: whether the security would realise what the credit paper assumed.
A weak one says a properly drafted and signed document, and cannot name a way in which a signed document still fails.
The seat is judged on commercial judgment — pricing a legal risk rather than describing it, in a form the business can act on by Friday. A credit committee reads security as what it would realise, which rests on what the paper assumed it would do; that assumption is the one the drafting has to make true, and the LVR guide shows what the committee thinks the security is worth.
START HERE · LVR, security and collateral
THE IN-TRAY · ONE MINUTE
Make the call on one file.
A short file on the ground this page covers. Every option opens with how far it sits from a senior banker’s read.
1 FILES · PICK A CALL ON ANY OF THEM
7 MORE ON THE LOAN · PROTECTION →WHERE DO YOU READ FROM? THE PLACEMENT →
// ALSO IN THE FUNCTIONS
- Financial accountant
- Product controller
- Regulatory reporting analyst
- Treasury analyst
- Software engineer
- Cyber security analyst
- Data scientist
- Business analyst
- Operations analyst
- People partner
- Marketing manager
- Procurement manager
The whole board, and how the four blocks fit together, is on what jobs banks hire for.
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