I’ve found good corporate lawyers will summarize the risks of taking some action and ask you (or higher up leadership) to weight those against the business case for taking said action.
Agreed, I worked with some very good lawyers at Google who understood the technical details and the context outside of corporate/industry. It wasn't always default 'no', especially if you knew how to ask the questions properly. It was default 'maybe and here's why'.
In fact, I was in Google Patent Litigation, and that's largely where that came from.
But you're right: you have to prepare the ground very carefully when you ask for legal advice. If you just ask out of the blue "can we do this?" you're asking for trouble.
Agreed. When I deal with our legal counsel, I often try to draw him out to determine how I need to prioritize my team's work. Generally he declines to give me any firm yes or no, and just tells me where he sees risks.
