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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

Whether law department lawyers compete with outside lawyers

Posted on May 03, 2009
A phrase from a treatise furrowed my brow: ?Although in-house legal departments are in competition with law firms, legal departments still remain the primary purchasers of outside legal services, and their purchasing options have improved dramatically...

Hourly billing rates of law firms and some ramifications

Posted on May 03, 2009
Hourly billing rates of outside counsel cover this blog like spring pollen, as they settle everywhere you look, increase dramatically once a year, and cause some general counsel to suffer allergic reactions. References to rates being plentiful, it took a...

A radical proposal ? divert bill-review time to firm-direction time

Posted on May 03, 2009
Don?t even whisper the following thought to your law firms! What if a general counsel were to abolish review of most invoices and re-direct the time thereby saved into approvals of weekly business plans by law, real-time calls and input,...

My article: three major benefits for departments that use offshore talent and three major concerns

Posted on May 03, 2009
Some of my thoughts on offshoring legal services are assembled in a recent article, published in Legal Strat. Rev., Spring 2009, at 19. Click here for a PDF Download 09-03 Rees Morrison Offshoring Pros and Cons Legal Strategy Review. I...

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Not what you hear: high satisfaction with their firms? ability to understand clients? business needs

Posted on May 03, 2009
Magazines and conferences relish headlines about dissatisfaction by general counsel with their law firms, but a recent survey by Robert Half Legal of 150 attorneys ?among the largest corporations in the United States and Canada? undermines those complaints...

A kindling of posts on the fees of law firms and their ?burn rate?

Posted on May 03, 2009
We who contemplate management of outside counsel focus hugely on total amounts paid, overlooking the importance and insights of the regularity of spending during a matter?s life. How much a department spends each month on a matter I define as...

?They Haven?t Blown Me Away? (Bruce Heintz)

Posted on April 30, 2009
? ?so, there?s got to be better firms than them out there,? assessed the GC, based on the recent performance of one of the company?s primary law firms. The last six years have been a sellers? market, evidenced by law...

?We Can Normally Get an Answer from Other Firms with Just One Phone Call? (Bruce Heintz)

Posted on April 30, 2009
? ? as opposed to [our primary law firm?s] approach of having a meeting with six people just to debate the issue,? contended the General Counsel. While this General Counsel is facetiously overstating the situation (or, maybe not), how can...

Data on billing rates of partners, and an extrapolated guestimate for 2009

Posted on April 30, 2009
Quite a few posts here tell something about typical charge-out rates of outside counsel (See my post of April 8, 2005: compare billing rates of your key firms to peer firms; Sept. 5, 2005: European law departments at about $220...

Most disfavored by law firms, yet most-favored nation agreements are sought by law departments

Posted on April 30, 2009
For once I side with law firms: most-favored-nation agreements (MFNs) are unfair, ineffective, meaningless, and unenforceable. Otherwise, they make sense. My entreaty on most-favored nation agreements seeks multilateral disarmament. Do away with them! General counsel should not ask for and...

Hopeful, but the ACC Covenant with Counsel is not all that game-changing

Posted on April 29, 2009
Of the 33 covenants, 21 of them are ho-hum, sporadically rolled out, always paid lip service to, and modestly adhered to in most law department-law firm relationships. Guidelines for outside counsel (and perhaps some engagement letters from law firms) state...

For comparable lawyers, fluctuations of billing rates across different cities?

Posted on April 29, 2009
Do some law firms charge different rates in different cities for partners who have the same levels of experience? I have heard that some law firms have offered to implement a cap on the rates of their higher-end partners (See...

Swine flu pandemic and law departments

Posted on April 29, 2009
Look, give me a break! I am trying hard to be topical. A survey conducted by OfficeTeam asked 522 office workers how frequently they go into work when they are feeling sick. ?Very frequently? was the response of 45 percent...

Which influences most in the selection process, the firm or the lawyer?

Posted on April 29, 2009
Firm managers try to grapple clients to the entire firm: ?BigCorp is a client of BigFirm!? Firm partners strive to become the trusted advisor of a person: ?LitAGC turns to me for BigMatters and Small!? General counsel come down on...

Whither the role of Boards in general counsel selection, pay and evaluation

Posted on April 28, 2009
"I see an increasing desire on the part of boards to participate in the hiring of a general counsel. I think that the board needs to be more and more involved. This is in keeping with the recommendation of the...

A merger followed by a decimation of the acquired company?s law department

Posted on April 28, 2009
What will happen to Sun's hefty legal department, which listed 170 lawyers in 2006 after Oracle acquires it? Consider the axe orgy after Oracle?s acquisition of BEA in April 2008. Of the 20 or so lawyers and eight legal staffers...

Do general counsel care if law firms are Six Sigma belted, ISO registered or PMI credentialed?

Posted on April 28, 2009
Two years ago, David Munn reported that the law firm Morgan Lewis had adopted Six Sigma in its mortgage loan practice. A detailed presentation on Morgan Lewis? methodology can be found on Garrett Worley?s blog. Separately, while doing some research...

Project management discipline useful inside law departments

Posted on April 28, 2009
Law Practice, Vol. 35, April/May 2009 at 45, refers to Diderico van Eyl, intellectual property counsel for SABIC Innovative Plastics, who uses project management techniques to improve legal work flow. As background, van Eyl mentions the Project Management Institute, which...

True, useful, and generalizeable ? but not all three at once when we comment on legal department management

Posted on April 28, 2009
My brother earned his PhD from Harvard Business School, where his professors often emphasized that business research could be ?true, useful, or generalizeable,? but rarely all three at once. I feel the same about my blog posts and much that...

Maps galore in the patent world

Posted on April 28, 2009
A presentation at a recent conference, by Andre Marais of Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, explained five maps regarding patents ? visual depictions of information ? that his firm can prepare for clients. The examples shown in the presentation appear to...

Pick a firm to help you dig into your data mining efforts

Posted on April 28, 2009
A general counsel might agree to provide to a primary law firm the department?s historical data on some class of matters. The only data redacted would be the name of the law firm that handled the matter (and any identifying...

TWOG ? merger of Twitter and blog

Posted on April 28, 2009
This blog had a recent visitor who read the following Tweet and clicked the URL. ?As the economy shrinks, so do paychecks of in-house counsel, if they are still employed: http://snipr.com/gec5f?. This lead from Twitter was added by @exterro. Note...

How to flourish with a brainstorming session: eleven suggestions

Posted on April 27, 2009
Two previous posts outlined five suggestions for how best to conduct brainstorming sessions (See my post of Oct. 30, 2006: rules, facilitator, preparation; and Nov. 25, 2006: private ideas before and mull afterwards.): 1. Have rules, such as an agenda...

If guidelines become tomes, gathering dust ?

Posted on April 27, 2009
After my admiring post on Cisco?s extensive guidelines for patents (See my post of April 22, 2009: Cisco?s 70-page guidelines for patent prep.), Jim Dunning, who blogs at GeoTrupe, commented with a more cynical ? probably realistic -- spin. ?My...

Exegesis on the Covenant with Counsel (Part III)

Posted on April 27, 2009
My previous comments about the ACC Covenant with Counsel addressed those eight commitments that are symmetric (See my post of April 25, 2009: reciprocal undertakings in the Covenant.) and six unilateral commitments that ought to be bilateral (See my post...

Part XXX of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on April 27, 2009
Here are the latest embedded metaposts (See my post of April 16, 2009: Part XXIX.), each of which shows the number of references cited within them. 1. Incumbent law firms (See my post of April 16, 2009: incumbent firms with...

Video conferencing, beyond cost control to other benefits

Posted on April 27, 2009
Janine Dascenzo, an Associate General Counsel at GE who is deeply involved in operations, mentions in a profile that ?we have been able to cut travel considerably by using our new video conferencing system, called TelePresence, from Cisco Systems.? That?s...

Ten suggestions for break-out groups at a large meeting or retreat

Posted on April 25, 2009
If you have a large meeting, perhaps a Town Hall or an off-site gathering, it may be useful to break the plenary group into smaller groups. The smaller groups can push the discussion ahead and then report back to the...

Digressions on the new general counsel of Schneider Electric

Posted on April 25, 2009
In March, Paris-based Schneider Electric SA, a 25-billion-Euro global energy management company, appointed Peter Wexler, an American, to serve as its chief legal officer. A profile of Wexler allows several observations on the challenges he faces or faced...

Management concerns of general counsel that apply much less to other staff units

Posted on April 25, 2009
Law departments stick out for a number of reasons when compared to other corporate support groups, such as IT, HR, finance, and facilities. Eight of them occur to me, of which the first four listed below are uniquely in the...

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