Law Department Management: In-House Counsel

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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

Law departments want law firms to use technology that saves clients money

Posted on January 21, 2009
I like the no-holds-barred mandate of a guideline for outside counsel, obligingly shared with me by the general counsel of JDS Uniphase, regarding software and hardware. "We must use technology to reduce expenses. Our team relies heavily on e-rooms, SharePoint,...

?We hate surprises,? say general counsel, and law firms should take heed

Posted on January 21, 2009
On the first page of the JDS Uniphase guidelines for outside counsel gleams the distinctly un-lawyerly sentence "We hate surprises." That dramatic and clear statement leads off two paragraphs about the utter importance of prompt and full communication between law...

Integration of a Code of Conduct with outside counsel guidelines, in two ways

Posted on January 21, 2009
Many companies have a Code of Business Conduct, but until I reviewed the Guidelines For Professional Service Providers of JDS Uniphase, I had not connected such a code and a law department's guidelines for outside counsel. The JDSU guidelines attach....

An online source of service providers, with many of them useful for legal departments

Posted on January 21, 2009
LexVisio includes 45 categories of service providers under ?Practice Support.? I counted 22 categories that might point an in-house lawyer in the direction of a desired service provider. Those 22 categories list 600 vendors, with the most (161) in ?Court...

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Online, free legal forms that might help some in-house counsel

Posted on January 21, 2009
As the online world inexorably proves that information wants to be free, in-house counsel will increasingly have more forms of agreements available online, and at no cost. One example of the genre is YourFreeLegalForms.com. According to an email exchange I...

A customized joint checklist of value indicators developed with your key law firms

Posted on January 21, 2009
In 2005, Robert Half Legal published its Future Law Office report on ?Client Service: Challenges and Strategies.? The report mentions on page 6 ways to measure client satisfaction. Surveys are one, face-to-face interviews are another, and "joint checklist" are a...

More research on what a general counsel can learn about a law firm on LinkedIn

Posted on January 21, 2009
Kevin O?Keefe, an expert in all things having to do with lawyers online, disputes part of my post about LinkedIn and its law firm members (See my post of Jan. 20, 2009: find out more about law firms through LinkedIn.)....

Once again, are recoveries through litigation to the credit of the legal department?

Posted on January 21, 2009
LyondellBasell?s legal team has ?recovered several hundred million dollars on the company?s affirmative claims against third parties,? according to an article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, Nov. 2008 at 34. Some people, who believe litigation is wasteful and unproductive...

Data on four reasons why law departments can?t hire even though they would like to hire

Posted on January 20, 2009
A survey gave respondents four choices to pick as the primary factors that limited the number of employees they could hire. By far the biggest restriction is ?budget,? which 62 percent of the nearly 200 respondents chose. This could mean...

Damages, settlements, and fines (legal resolution costs) in relation to inside and outside costs

Posted on January 20, 2009
Data on payments made for legal resolutions such as damages, settlements, and fines are difficult to obtain (See my post of Dec. 17, 2008: settlements with 26 references cited.). Let?s call them collectively ?legal resolution costs.? What would be useful...

If you are the general counsel, don?t let partners ?speak regularly with key clients?

Posted on January 20, 2009
In 2005, Robert Half Legal published its Future Law Office report on ?Client Service: Challenges and Strategies.? In a portion about service issues and solutions, on page 4, a startling quote appears. "The best way for a [law] firm to...

Does Black-Scholes give a value for restricted stock awards?

Posted on January 20, 2009
The Small Law Department Compensation Survey conducted by the ACC and Empsight,includes in the term ?LTI Valuation? (long-term incentive) three elements: the value of stock options, the value of restricted stock awards, and any long term cash awards. The survey...

Several reasons why the ?N? of a survey (number of respondents to a question) is important

Posted on January 20, 2009
I paid attention to the Small Law Department Compensation Survey conducted in the summer of 2008 by ACC and Empsight, www.accempsight.com, at page 9 of the Review Sample. The table on that page lists widely varying numbers of companies who...

Some in-house lawyers manage people who are not on the law department?s headcount

Posted on January 20, 2009
During my legal consulting projects I have seen instances of this with people who review marketing and promotional literature, with compliance staff, with documentation specialists, with technical staff, and with contract administrators. A lawyer supervises their work, but their headcount...

Business intelligence software in 2005 that figures out fixed-fee amounts?

Posted on January 20, 2009
The 2005 issue of Robert Half Legal?s Future Law Office report, ?Client Service: Challenges and Strategies,? at 9, cites a Canadian article on business intelligence software (BI software) used by law firms. The article says ?many law firms are adopting...

Law firms and lawyers on LinkedIn ? learn more about firms you have hired or might hire

Posted on January 20, 2009
A post of November 24th on Kevin O?Keefe?s excellent Lexblog praises LinkedIn. ?LinkedIn [has attracted] hundreds of thousands of practicing lawyers and corporate counsel. Every major law firm in the country has a LinkedIn profile providing detailed demographic information...

Conflicting data on how often compliance reports to the general counsel

Posted on January 20, 2009
A General Counsel Roundtable survey in 2007 collected from one hundred law departments the ?non-legal? functions that fall to the general counsel. Compliance ranked third after Corporate Secretary and Corporate Governance (See my post of Jan. 18, 2008: ?Corporate Governance?...

Higher base pay for general counsel as they manage more attorneys

Posted on January 18, 2009
The Small Law Department Compensation Survey, conducted in the summer of 2008 by ACC and Empsight, reports on data from approximately 340 law departments. According to a sidebar and chart in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, Nov. 2008 at 8,...

Lawsuits are not relevant in terms of 25 percent drops in share price

Posted on January 18, 2009
I could retire if I had a dollar for every time someone mentions ?bet-the-company? litigation (See my post of Feb. 28, 2006: bet-the-company litigation, rare but often cited.). So, with some satisfaction, I pored over the chart in the ACC...

Fifteen blogs that post mostly on legal process outsourcing

Posted on January 18, 2009
Some reader, who can thereby enjoy their 15 minutes of fame on this blog, should tell me where there is a comprehensive list of blogs that concentrate on legal-related offshoring. In the meantime I trawled some blog rolls and offer...

?Corporate Governance? identified as a very common non-legal function of general counsel

Posted on January 18, 2009
A recent survey by the General Counsel Roundtable collected from one hundred law departments the ?non-legal? functions that fall within their general counsel?s set of responsibilities. The corporate secretary function, for example, came first, with almost 90 percent of the...

Two common distortions among many decision traps

Posted on January 18, 2009
Humans are subject to a raft of common irrationalities when they make decisions. This post covers two of those shortcomings. Way back in November of 2001 I published an article in Legal Times about several of these flaws in our...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #90 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on January 18, 2009
Yearly paper usage by white-collar workers. The Atlantic, Jan./Feb. 2009 at 67, tells us that white collar workers, at least, are gradually moving toward less paper. In 2000, the average worker ? with lawyers included somewhere in the lot ?...

Six software packages, free or low cost to help you tackle your deluge of emails

Posted on January 18, 2009
Fast Co., Iss. 132, Feb. 2009 at 50, cites research on email volume that the ?average worker receives 200 a day.? Regardless of your inflow, these six programs sound useful to some in-house lawyers. The article praises ClearContext, a free...

A view that fewer opportunities exist for pro bono services in-house than in law firms

Posted on January 16, 2009
Yale Law School?s Career Development Office posts online a guide for its law students who may be interested in working in a business setting, one of which is to practice in a law department. The high-level description of corporate practice...

Do in-house counsel shoot from the hip on legal advice more than outside lawyers?

Posted on January 16, 2009
The Career Development Office at Yale Law School has posted online a guide for its law students who may be interested in working in a business setting. One chapter talks about in-house practice. Toward the end of the discussion about...

Thirty to fifty percent chance of losing your job after a merger

Posted on January 16, 2009
One of the contributors to Yale Law School?s Career Development Office employment guide for law students is a senior lawyer at Medtronic. In his bio he writes: ?In 1990, after British company Grand Metropolitan PLC acquired Pillsbury, it cut the...

Thirty to fifty percent chance of losing your job after a merger

Survey data on the frequency of outsourcing various types of law-related services

Posted on January 16, 2009
Legally Yours, an impressive blog site edited by Rahul Jindal, displays the results of a survey. The 287 respondents, of undisclosed source, answered the question, ?Which service are you outsourcing/considering to outsource/supporting?? [Not the optimal phrasing for a question if...

Consider whether to outfit your legal staff with dual monitors to increase their productivity

Posted on January 16, 2009
As reported in the NY Times, Jan. 15, 2009, at B9, researchers ?recently asked office workers to perform several common tasks using various monitor configurations. They found that people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at...

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