Finishing 2024 Strong

Don’t conflate busyness with achievement in the final months of 2024. Here, Founder + Director, Demetrio Zema, offers his advice to make the most of the final months of the year.

Can you believe, there are just 120 days until Christmas— let that sink in for a moment.

As we enter the final quarter of the year, it's tempting to pile more tasks onto our to-do lists, each one seemingly more urgent and critical than the last. But, as most of us know from experience, this isn't the path to success, let alone wellbeing. Instead, it's about focusing on how we can make the most of the remaining months. This newsletter, I thought I’d share some advice I’ve gathered over the years to help finish 2024 strong.  

Prioritise ruthlessly. Many of the GCs I speak with are moving away from conflating busyness with strategic achievement. My advice? Be deliberate about the impact you want to make between now and year-end. Focus your energy (and your team's) on the actions that will truly move the needle on those bold, audacious goals—and look for smarter ways to handle the BAU.

Stay accountable. Sharing and tracking progress makes it easier to stay on course and to bring others along with you. In our upcoming GC Roundtable events in Melbourne and Sydney, we’ll explore how to ‘Outsize Your Impact’ by using digital scoreboards and purposeful communications to drive progress.

Start planning for 2025. While it may be too early for concrete strategy sessions, now is the ideal time to start reflecting on your personal and professional goals. This early contemplation will help surface your intentions so that when it's time to set formal goals, you’ll have a clear sense of direction.

Don’t go it alone. Working in-house, especially as a GC, can sometimes feel isolating. For breakthrough thinking, connection is key. Amid the rush to year’s end, make time to grow and nurture your network. If you’d like to join our next in-house community event (both in-person and virtual), we'd love to have you involved—reach out to us here.

And, of course, celebrate the wins. At Law Squared, creating a positive environment that allows our lawyers to perform at their best—for themselves and for our clients—is core to our mission. This means celebrating milestones, recharging, and recommitting to our goals. In that spirit, I’d like to share some of my highlights from the past few months:

Legal delivery for one of Victoria’s first transmission line projects. 

Since the launch of our Energy + Infrastructure practice, we’ve been working on a large-scale land acquisition and landholder engagement project in Western Victoria. It’s clear that landholder engagement is a key differentiator (and potential roadblock) for achieving Australia’s net-zero energy targets and we’re proud to be supporting our clients by contributing to this critical work by ensuring fair land access rights and facilitating the construction of essential infrastructure. Read Law Squared’s response to the Australian Energy Market Operator’s release of the ISP here.

Onboarding new talent. 

Despite challenges in the legal talent market, we successfully onboarded a number of senior legal professionals, including General Counsel. This not only enhances our capability but also validates our unique model and ethos. We’re reversing the trend of talent drain by attracting top in-house talent back to private practice through our distinctive value proposition. Meet our new in-house specialists here.

Supporting GCs taking on a joint CoSec roles. 

The enthusiastic response to our recent Governance webcast highlighted how sought after the GC/CoSec role is and just how challenging it can be to balance both. Watching our talented panel of female GC-CoSecs confirmed the importance of practical preparation—whether through document audits, governance tools, or targeted training. Watch our Governance: Balancing the Dual Roles of GC + CoSec webcast on-demand here.

And if my Christmas countdown has prompted you to think about how you’ll manage the end-of-year rush and well deserved annual leave requests, please reach out to us about how we ca support you and your team, either across our Commercial + Corporate, Employment + Workplace Relations, Disputes + Litigation, or Digital + Innovation teams in an adhoc capacity, or via our monthly fixed-cost legal support solution, Law Squared as a Service (LSaaS), which can help your team manage overflow and resourcing gaps, without missing a beat on BAU.  We’re here to help – Reach out here.