Figured out the real reason our team meetings never have anyone from legal in them, and it saved me a write up
Honestly I always wondered why the legal folks at my company never show up to regular team syncs, and everyone just assumed they were too busy or too important. Then a buddy of mine in compliance told me the actual reason: anything said in those meetings can get pulled into discovery if a lawsuit ever happens, so legal stays out on purpose to avoid hearing stuff they'd have to report. I tested this by sending a casual email summary of a meeting to the legal alias, and got a reply within 20 minutes asking me to take them off the thread, which basically confirmed it. Since then I keep my meeting notes vague on purpose, just action items and dates, nothing about who said what or why we picked one vendor over another. Saved me two weeks ago when a project went sideways and someone tried to pull old chat logs, and my name was not anywhere near the messy decisions. Tbh nobody teaches you this stuff during onboarding, you just learn it by watching who suddenly goes quiet when certain people join the call. Has anyone else noticed their legal team dodging meetings like this, or is my company just weird about it?
Man, I gotta push back on this a little. Legal skipping meetings to avoid discovery sounds clever on paper, but that reasoning falls apart when you actually look at how discovery works. Once a lawsuit starts, they can pull emails, Slack messages, texts, basically anything written down, whether or not a lawyer was in the room when it got said. So legal not showing up doesn't really protect anyone, it just means nobody catches the dumb stuff before it becomes a problem. Also, that quick reply asking you to take them off the thread isn't some secret confirmation, that's just standard practice, lawyers don't want their inbox filling up with random meeting recaps they never asked for. Keeping your notes vague is fine and all, but I wouldn't read some big corporate conspiracy into it, sometimes people just don't want to sit through another hour long status call lol.