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In-House Counsel

Law Department Management

Comments on every aspect of how best to manage a law department, including how to manage outside counsel. Topics of interest to general counsel and other in-house lawyers who manage legal functions.
By Rees Morrison

Post Frequency: 39.5/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 11:12:47

What is a ?risk management checklist??

Posted on December 21, 2009
At the end of a train of governance documents for legal departments such as mission statements, corporate policies, and contract templates, an article in Int?l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Summer 2009 at 1299, closes with the ambulance: ?risk management...

RFPs are better if they include some benchmarks

Posted on December 21, 2009
Some of the information you include in your Requests for Proposal should be comparative benchmarks. Especially if your legal department wants to find a firm that will handle the services you need on a fixed fee, you want to provide...

A good number of law firms to invite to compete for work ? nine

Posted on December 17, 2009
In one post I suggested that legal departments, when they decide to send out an RFP, think like seniors who apply to college: three stretch firms that might be too costly for the work, three sure-fire firms that probably share...

The risk of misunderstanding conditional probabilities ? an example from legal departments

Posted on December 17, 2009
Let?s suppose that five law departments lauded everywhere boast total legal spending in terms of revenue less than the median for their respective industries and each of them uses electronic billing software. In other words, 100 percent of those fiscal...

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No dramatic change seen by general counsel in use of contract or temporary staff

Posted on December 17, 2009
Hildebrandt Baker Robbins, a unit of Thomson Reuters, shared some data from its 2009 Law Department Survey on cost control strategies. The survey found that 73 percent of the companies have no plans to increase the use of contract/temporary staff....

Metcalf?s Law and the increasing value of benchmark studies with more participants

Posted on December 17, 2009
The more members there are in a network, the greater its value. Think of Facebook and LinkedIn. This intuitive appreciation of why more participants in a benchmark study means more reliable and valued results was recognized and quantified by Robert...

High potentials, but potential for what? Information processing, which good lawyers do well

Posted on December 17, 2009
Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo!, writes in the Economist, The World in 2010 at 128, about leadership in the information-overload age, Bartz observes that ?hi-Po?s? have traditionally meant standout employees ?who could climb the next rung of the management ladder...

Trivial cost-reduction steps commonly reported by legal departments in survey

Posted on December 17, 2009
Hildebrandt, a unit of Thomson Reuters, released some data on cost control strategies from its 2009 Law Department Survey. Not exactly bold steps taken by general counsel. Reducing travel expenditures tops the list of 18 measures tracked in the survey...

Part XLIII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on December 16, 2009
Click on any of these ten embedded metaposts to see my prior posts. Each of these (See my post of Nov. 5, 2009: Part XLII) is shadowed by the number of its back references. 1. Books on law department management...

Don?t just hoover up facts, think about the decision you face and how best to make it

Posted on December 15, 2009
Michael Mauboussin, Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition (Harvard Bus. Press 2009) at xix, counsels us not to overdo information gathering. "Indeed, typical decision-makers allocate only 25 percent of their time to thinking about the problem properly and learning...

"Law departments are twenty years out of touch with best-in-class processes"

Posted on December 15, 2009
This assertion by James Potter, General Counsel of Del Monte Foods, pokes up its provocative head in David Galbenski,Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today (2009) at 192. Oh that his conclusion were true: "consequently, our clients will...

Solo lawyers in outposts need to be senior

Posted on December 15, 2009
Nearly all large legal departments find themselves with a single lawyer in one or more locations. Int?l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Summer 2009 at 1301, doesn?t mince words: ?For those who will be the only lawyer on site at...

Head lawyers in a department for broad geographic regions

Posted on December 15, 2009
Int?l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Summer 2009 at 1299, comments broadly on the advisability in larger legal departments to divide into regions and appoint a top lawyer for each. ?It is likely advisable to do so if the business...

Ask your company?s marketing department to help you upgrade your brand image??

Posted on December 15, 2009
What your internal clients think of you is the essence of your department?s ?brand.? One somewhat far-fetched way to burnish that brand is to seek professional help. A lawyer writing in Int?l In-House Counsel J., Vol 2, Summer 2009 at...

The complexity of the notion of full-time equivalent (FTE)

Posted on December 15, 2009
Every benchmark metric about staff ought to concern itself with full-time equivalents (FTE). The number appears to be plain vanilla, but reality serves tutti-fruity. It is not as simple as the normal adjustments for those who start and leave during...

Four more ideas to improve your e-mail effectiveness

Posted on December 14, 2009
E-mail productivity and security tips accumulate everywhere. I thought I had covered the field comprehensively, but four more good ideas appear in the NYSBA J., Vol. 81, Nov./Dec. 2009 at 58-59 (See my post of Aug. 26, 2009: 30 e-mail...

Rating law firms ? learn from a clever rating system of arbitrators and mediators

Posted on December 14, 2009
Amidst all the hoopla about rating law firms online, along comes a respected organization that hopes to have online ratings of ?neutrals? available in early 2010 (See my post of Nov. 5, 2009: collected assessments by law departments of their...

SEC Commissioner: ?I hope [companies] maintain strong ? they probably need stronger ? legal in-house capabilities.?

Posted on December 14, 2009
An attitude I warmly applaud, the speaker was Elisse Walter, a Securities and Exchange (SEC) commissioner. She was interviewed before she spoke at a recent conference. Her point was that in light of Sarbanes-Oxley and heightened regulatory scrutiny, companies should...

Shouldn?t law departments reciprocate prompt billing with prompt payment?

Posted on December 14, 2009
Clients rightfully want law firms to bill promptly. No surprise bills late in the year! No laggard invoices ? management delayed is management denied. That granted, chief legal officers can consider two techniques: (1) insist that law firms submit all...

Four remarks about the legal function at Johnson & Johnson

Posted on December 13, 2009
David Galbenski, Unbound: How Entrepreneurship is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today (2009) at 219-224, includes an interview with Phil Crowley, a senior lawyer in the Johnson & Johnson legal department. I picked out some tidbits. History: Ken Perry founded the...

A report based on interviews with 22 general counsel of major European companies

Posted on December 13, 2009
The Belgium-based consultants, FrahanBlond�, mention in a May 14, 2009 post that they had completed a study of large law departments. I have not seen the report but I want to point it out because of its relevance to readers...

A huge number of e-billers does not make an ?online community of legal professionals?

Posted on December 13, 2009
?With a network of more than 100,000 users in 180 countries, Serengeti Law is now the largest online community of legal professionals in the world.? So claims a press release summarized in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, Dec. 2009 at...

The shift to have legal gumshoes match the corporate footprint ? lawyers spread where the business is

Posted on December 13, 2009
Sabine Chalmers mentions in her recent column the ?some 200 individuals worldwide? in her legal department at Anheuser-Busch InBev. She emphazes ?retaining and building local talent? as well as ?the even distribution of in-house lawyers throughout the company?s markets ?...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #126 ? posts longa, morsels breva

Posted on December 13, 2009
Weight-management programs at law firms coming to an RFP near you. In a 2008 survey of more than 450 employers with at least 1,000 workers, ?Nearly three-quarters cited weight management plans as a chief strategy for maintaining affordable health care...

Global CLOs and the punishing level of travel required

Posted on December 10, 2009
?As chief legal officer for Anheuser-Busch InBev, [Sabine] Chalmers estimates she spends 50 percent of her time circling the globe in order to execute her lawyerly responsibilities.? It aches just to read that (See my post of July 16, 2009:...

R&D spend, patent licensing revenue and the law department as profit center

Posted on December 10, 2009
The Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 87, Dec. 2009 at 72, mentions Royal Philips Electronics and that it is ?capitalizing on the more than 60,000 patents in its portfolio to earn hundreds of millions of euros annually from licensing.? I have...

A small, paradoxical step to improve productivity: leave time between meetings

Posted on December 10, 2009
For those of you who face too much work and too little time, it sounds contradictory but give yourself ten or fifteen minutes between meetings. This tip from the ABA Law Practice Management Section e-letter set me to thinking. Many...

Consider a per diem charge by law firm lawyers to cover all their meals

Posted on December 10, 2009
Consulting to a large government agency, I have come to appreciate the Federal Government?s billing arrangement known as the ?per diem.? For every major city, the Government sets an amount that it will reimburse each day for meals and incidentals....

A budget for all legal services handled by law firms and client approval of the budgets!?

Posted on December 10, 2009
All law firms working for The Body Shop propose a budget for their matters before they start. ?Proposals that vary significantly from the legal department and business client?s value assessments are rejected.? Gracious me! Do clients review budgets of law...

LawBidding: no-cost site for law departments to post questions about legal issues and receive proposals

Posted on December 08, 2009
Nick Cronin, an attorney who works in-house at a Wisconsin corporation, founded Law Bidding early this year. He wrote me and explained that ?LawBidding.com lets businesses (and individuals) post legal issues and then allows attorneys who have registered with the...

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