Dr No - What Lawyers Can Learn from a Nuclear Submarine

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them." – Ernest Hemingway

When US Navy Captain David Marquet took command of USS Santa Fe, it was the worst-performing submarine in the fleet.

The catch? He didn’t know the ship’s technical details well enough to lead the way traditional captains did.

Leading the traditional way—barking orders like a Hollywood admiral—was a guaranteed disaster.

So, he did something radical. He stopped giving orders. He started asking questions.

The result? His struggling crew became one of the highest-performing teams in the Navy.

His leadership transformation—told in Turn the Ship Around!, one of Fortune’s Top 10 Business Books of all time—flipped the script to make teams think for themselves.

Most legal departments still run on a leader-follower model.

The GC makes the calls; everyone else executes.

The result? Slow decisions, overloaded GCs, and teams that behave like human Track Changes.

But what if your legal team ran like a nuclear submarine? Try these:

1. Ban the Lazy Questions

Ever get hit with “What do you want me to do?” five times before lunch? Flip the script:

Instead of: “Review this contract and flag any risks.”
Try this: “What risks do you think the business should focus on?”

Instead of: “Approve this contract draft.”
Try this: “Does this version protect our key interests, or are we signing it out of habit?”

Your team will hate this at first. Tough. Making people think is uncomfortable—like leg day at the gym. But it pays off.

2. Introduce the ‘Intent Before Approval’ Rule

Tell your team: “Don’t ask me what to do. Tell me what you intend to do and why.”

You’ll get responses like:
🔴 “I intend to blindly copy-paste from our last deal.”
🟢 “I intend to push back on this indemnity clause because it could expose us to X liability.”

Now we’re talking.

3. Run ‘What If?’ Scenarios

Legal work is full of ‘it depends’. So use that to train proactive thinking:

• “What if the counterparty refuses this clause—what’s our Plan B?”

• “If the CFO asks why we’re pushing back on this, how would you explain it?”

It’s like chess. Except instead of wooden pieces, it’s contracts, and instead of grandmasters, it’s lawyers who haven’t had enough coffee.

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The Future of Legal Teams: Smarter, Not Bigger

David Marquet didn’t fix the Santa Fe by hiring more officers—he changed how the existing crew operated.

Likewise, the best GCs aren’t just running legal teams—they’re redesigning them. The old model? Build a bloated in-house team or overpay traditional firms for everything.

Instead of a legal department that asks for answers, you want one that owns them. That requires:

• A strong in-house core team (fewer, but better-paid and highly empowered).

• A flexible, on-demand layer of external experts for:

  • Peaks of work

  • Niche expertise

  • Senior, end-to-end projects

• Traditional firms only for capital markets and brand-required litigation/arbitration.

Want to see how top GCs are making this work? Let’s talk. Book a call and let’s rethink your legal team structure.