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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

Part XXVIII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on April 05, 2009
Here are the latest embedded metaposts (See my post of March 19, 2009: Part XXVII.), each of which shows the number of references cited within them. 1. Collaboration and teamwork (See my post of April 5, 2009: teamwork and collaboration...

Six search methods to retrieve documents from knowledge bases

Posted on April 05, 2009
A recent article describes six ?search technologies,? each of which can help a law department?s members find useful material stored on drives, intranets, or databases. The ABA J., Vol. 95, April 2009 at 43, focuses on litigation support rather than...

Disadvantages of picking a core team at a law firm to work on matters

Posted on April 05, 2009
As no good deed goes unpunished, so no good idea goes uncriticized (See my post of March 23, 2009: pros and cons of various practices, with 13 references and two metaposts.). Although I like the idea of a law department...

Parameters for a fixed-fee retainer paid to a law firm for occasional short calls

Posted on April 05, 2009
Many law departments would like to have an arrangement with a law firm whereby in-house lawyers or clients can telephone with a quick question and yet not worry about racking up fees. The solution is a retainer agreement whereby the...

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Higher discounts for lower-value work?

Posted on April 05, 2009
A co-panelist recently mentioned as a cost-control method the practice of requesting higher discounts for work that the law department deems to be of less value. There may be a kernel of a useful idea in that practice, but I...

Some of the intellectually deepest ideas from this blog (res mensan)

Posted on April 05, 2009
A portion of the 4,200 posts on this blog are cerebral. For example, the ones I picked for this collection touch on deep and deeply significant ideas. Perhaps the most intellectually significant idea dealt with by this blog is neuroscience...

Most important concepts for general counsel as managers: the next ten

Posted on April 05, 2009
The ten most important management concepts chief legal officers should understand were unveiled earlier (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: ten most important concepts: client, risk, quality, productivity, talent and then structure, information flow, decisions, value and objectivity)...

?What have we stopped doing this quarter that we did last quarter??

Posted on April 05, 2009
A general counsel on a recent panel said that he wants an answer to this question from his team every quarter. He does not want to hear about matters that ended; he wants to hear about low-value activities that are...

Sometimes in-house lawyers need to back away from the table

Posted on April 05, 2009
Lawyers for corporations always want a ?seat at the table.? But sometimes, if the truth be told, it is a good idea not to be at the table. For example, if a business manager brings along an in-house lawyer to...

For a general counsel, four pros and four cons of cross selling by law firms

Posted on April 02, 2009
Cross selling is when a partner at a firm you use introduces you to another partner there who has a skill or knowledge base the introducer hopes is advantageous to you. This common practice has good points and bad points....

Clients undeservedly blame lawyers when deals crater

Posted on April 02, 2009
An article in The Bus. Lawyer, Vol, 64, Feb. 2009 at 309, makes the point that lawyers often take the blame for a deal collapsing when in fact business executives sidestepped tough issues that eventually came to light through the...

Pros and cons of specifying the format in a Request for Proposal

Posted on April 02, 2009
When they seek competitive bids, many law departments tell firms very precisely how the firms should present their proposal (See my post of March 30, 2008: RFP with 22 references.). Most specify the content they want and don?t want as...

HSBC Japan?s general counsel on secondment, strap line, GCs new to company and panels

Posted on April 02, 2009
The general counsel of HSBC Japan features in a profile in Asian-Counsel, e-edition March 2009 at 38. Michael Hancock, while practicing at Lovells and before joining HSBC, took a six-month secondment with Standard Chartered Bank. A few years later he...

Workshops with key firms to improve how they and your department can work better together [

Posted on April 01, 2009
Ann Page and Richard Trapp, Managing External Legal Resources (ICSA 2007) at 43, describe how Carillion?s legal department holds ?improvement workshops ? joint workshops with network firms concentrating on improving specific aspects of the way we work together? (italics in...

My first anniversary as an independent consultant to law departments ? join me as I blow out the candle!

Posted on April 01, 2009
My shingle went up as a solo consultant to general counsel one year ago today, a deeply satisfying year. This blog, too, has benefited because I feel free to write about any topic and in whatever form I believe. I...

Benchmark reports should calculate weighted averages, correctly

Posted on April 01, 2009
Most surveys report average figures, such as the average billing rate of outside counsel or the average number of lawyers per billion of revenue. Most reports calculate their averages by adding each participant?s figure and dividing by the number of....

Adjusted for inflation, median damages in patent litigation have held steady for 12 years

Posted on April 01, 2009
This blog has many posts about patent litigation and the costs of patent litigation (See my post of Oct. 2, 2008: costs of patent litigation, with 13 references.) so it surprised me that ?The annual median damages award since 1995...

A gating process before a lawyer can assign work to a law firm

Posted on April 01, 2009
If an inside lawyer cannot call a partner to instruct the firm without first getting permission from a superior, that is a gating process. Without having to obtain approval, the first lawyer might not have thought much about the cost;...

A post mortem technique that asks for one suggestion from a client for how to improve

Posted on March 31, 2009
Have you considered ?single-point post-transaction? reviews? "At the end of each transaction ask individual business colleagues within your organization for one improvement suggestion. This should be one improvement you and your external lawyers can make to continue to improve the...

RFP processes apply much more broadly than just to commodity legal services

Posted on March 31, 2009
Previous posts have disagreed with the ideas of Bo Yancey, Director of Professional Services at Redwood Analytics, on March 9, 2009, about RFPs. Here is my third disagreement with Yancey. ?In the end, firms and clients are best served working...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #96 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on March 31, 2009
Nice folks shouldn?t be expected to finish last. ?People tend to see warmth and competence as inversely related.? As explained in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, Feb. 2009 at 24, being nice doesn?t mean being incompetent. Nor, of course,...

Your law firms will try to dissuade you from an RFP process that threatens them

Posted on March 31, 2009
?The best way to deal with RFP?s is to avoid them altogether, and the stronger and deeper the relationship with a client, the better chance a firm has of doing just that. Redwood Analytics has conducted research that indicates, not...

A prevalent view from law firms: ?RFP?s are A Necessary Evil?

Posted on March 31, 2009
Law firm partners widely dislike RFPs, unless they by getting one they have an opportunity to secure work from a new client. If firms only see RFPs as bludgeons to shrink their margins, as the following quote asserts, they would...

Six of the most common inadequacies of general counsel as people managers

Posted on March 31, 2009
Grant general counsel legal knowledge and judgment. Grant them the ability to manage up and across their peers. What about managing down? Even if a general counsel avoids managerial ineptitude, some shortcomings in leading members of a law department are...

Managerially inept general counsel and other managers: nine additional posts

Posted on March 31, 2009
As we blame parents for many misdeeds and misfortunes of their children, so too we blame managers for many shortcomings and grievances of their employees. General counsel, in loco parentis, face similar complaints, most deservedly if they themselves behave badly...

Social networking for in-house lawyers ? a series of posts on various blogs

Posted on March 31, 2009
This post is part of a series sponsored by Martindale-Hubbell Connected. Please see tomorrow?s post on Sean Doherty?s blog, and all the subsequent posts in the series. A couple of recommendations I would make for lawyers who are new to...

In-house lawyers and use of ?client? compared to ?business partner? (and ?customer?)

Posted on March 31, 2009
Most in-house lawyers, I would wager, refer to fellow employees who seek their legal advice as ?clients.? Others, a much smaller number, vociferously reject that term. They perceive themselves as working together with fellow employees on a team and disavow...

A homegrown Access database for information management

Posted on March 29, 2009
Nelda Young, the Contracts and Litigation Manager at Celerity, Inc., recently posted a comment on my LinkedIn group, Law Department Management. It deserves wider circulation. ?I've created a true "tool" for my Legal Department. It is a customized Microsoft Access...

Law departments do not want the law firms they rely on to run at a loss

Posted on March 29, 2009
Amidst the prevailing frenzy of cost cutting, it is worth emphasizing that general counsel do not want to pinch pennies so much that their spousal firms ? the few they are married to -- refuse to take on more work....

Four techniques from one company regarding management of intellectual property

Posted on March 29, 2009
A company I consulted to is steeped in intellectual property (IP) and four of its practices regarding those assets struck me as worthy of note. 1. The company runs three ?IP Review Boards? ? one for each business line, because...

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