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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

Mashups of matter management systems and complementary databases

Posted on December 18, 2008
LT Online, the provider of the Lawtrac matter management system (MMS), announces in Law Tech News, Dec. 2008 at 9, that Lawtrac can now download directly from CT Corp.?s Universal Service of Process Interface. As I thought about this database... pa href="http://feeds...

More on bonuses for firms and their discontents

Posted on December 18, 2008
My accumulating doubts about the efficacy of bonuses dangled before law firms spilled over into an article. Click here for a pdf of my recent article. Download 08-08-08 Rees Morrison Bonuses NY LJ The article draws on a number of... pa href="http://feeds...

Pros and cons of litigation oversight by non-litigators

Posted on December 18, 2008
Should transaction-oriented business lawyers, generalists who mostly handle contracts and the range of legal issues that arise for a business unit, also handle the litigation that arises for the client? Most law departments answer no, at least for cases other...

In-house managers of lawyers should take into account people hate asking for help

Posted on December 18, 2008
?People hate asking for help,? according to Stanford Bus., Vol. 77, Nov. 2008 at 9. ?It makes them embarrassed, guilty, and fearful that they will look incompetent.? Now, couple that commonplace with the risk aversion typical of lawyers and the... pa href="http://feeds...

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Grant a right of first refusal on lucrative work if the firm takes on other work at a fixed amount

Posted on December 18, 2008
Sometimes a general counsel may find that a law firm is willing to handle a set of work for a fixed fee, such as all ERISA questions, if the firm in turn enjoys a privileged position when juicy law suits... pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/typepad/TfzN?a=bNfcy7"img src="http://feeds...

For ambitious lawyers of the future, beyond neuropharmacology gleams gene doping

Posted on December 17, 2008
I have predicted that lawyers inside and outside corporations will increasingly use brain-enhancing drugs to sharpen their mental faculties (See my post of June 22, 2008: neuroscience with 32 references.). Pills for performance is probably happening already, and drugs taken...

Ziggurats or Hershey Kisses? The distribution of work in law departments by sophistication

Posted on December 17, 2008
Ziggurats were pyramidal structures of the Babylonians. Each level moving upward was indented by terraces but the basic appearance was triangular. Hershey Kisses, by contrast, have broad bases but their width shrinks dramatically and unevenly toward their pointy top...

When you negotiate a fixed-fee deal with a firm, have an Executive Board partner sign it

Posted on December 17, 2008
A general counsel was describing a flat-fee arrangement he struck with a firm to handle about a million dollars of work in three buckets of services. Among other observations, he stressed that if a law department fashions something unusual like... pa href="http://feeds...

On the refusal to pay for first and second year associates

Posted on December 17, 2008
At a panel this month, I heard that a year ago Home Depot?s general counsel told his law firms that the law department would not pay for the time of first and second year associates. When asked about the reaction... pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/typepad/TfzN?a=05oMEd"img src="http://feeds...

Are law departments deliberately slowing down payments to law firms?

Posted on December 17, 2008
An aggrieved managing partner at a recent conference told a roomful of inside counsel that payment patterns are changing with clients. He said, in effect, that law departments are stringing out payment of fees for months and months. My feeling... pa href="http://feeds...

Eyes rolling at $200 an hour charged for a paralegal, but blind to practicality

Posted on December 17, 2008
At a conference recently, an attendee lambasted a law firm that has the temerity to charge a paralegal out at $200 an hour. $200 an hour for a paralegal!? To couple ?paralegal? and ?$200? into ludicrous is wrong-headed. If the... pa href="http://feeds...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #85 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on December 17, 2008
Software that helps to review promotional materials. I heard during a consulting project about software that reviews advertising, developed for Unilever?s law department in Australia. Apparently, business managers down under have some legal responsibility regarding contract review, unlike in the...

Roughly half of cases that go to trial settle during the trial

Posted on December 17, 2008
This factoid comes from an article in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 30, and others have said as much (See my post of Oct. 27, 2005: Fulbright Jaworski notes 60% settle during trial.). Law department management issues surround... pa href="http://feeds.feedburner...

Pro bono services by law departments as distinguished from community service activities

Posted on December 16, 2008
Strictly speaking, pro bono service is intended to encompass a relatively narrow scope of activities. While community services is encouraged, true pro bono service as envisioned by rules of professional conduct is limited to legal services for persons of limited...

By 2013, the total number of outside law firms our department uses will?

Posted on December 16, 2008
From a survey on Legal OnRamp, a professional networking site for lawyers, 84 in-house lawyers responded who work at companies with revenues of at least one billion dollars. The American Lawyer?s Aric Press put the survey in context. Over the...

Techniques that would be helpful in most mediations

Posted on December 16, 2008
Here are six techniques that you should consider asking your mediator to incorporate. They come from Dispute Res. Mag., Vol. 14, Spring/Summer 2008, and are listed in declining order of value as determined by a survey of 109 participants in...

Thirteen ?Corporate Law Department Blogs? on Justia?s BlawgSearch

Posted on December 16, 2008
Justia?s BlawgSearch has a category called ?Corporate Law Department Blogs". I have listed the blawgs in that category with this month?s rank from the highest ranking down. Justia determines the rank of a blog based on the number of visits...

Part XXI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on December 16, 2008
With this post I have reached 210 embedded metaposts with URL links, each of which shows the number of references cited within them (See my post of Nov. 9, 2008: Part XX.). 1. Billing rate increases (See my post of...

E-billing posts proliferate on this blog

Posted on December 14, 2008
E-billing has steadily ascended the ladder of popularity and penetration among law departments. Accordingly, this blog has compiled at least 45 posts on e-billing (See my post of Aug. 15, 2008: ranking of e-billing as IT application; Aug. 27, 2008...

Data on hiring few new firms and firing even fewer incumbent firms

Posted on December 14, 2008
To a survey on Legal OnRamp, a professional networking site for lawyers, 84 lawyers responded who work at companies that have revenues of at least one billion dollars. The American Lawyer?s Aric Press put the survey in context. Sixty-three of...

Technology your law department needs to enable telecommuting

Posted on December 14, 2008
Every law department that allows its lawyers to work from home has to consider how it should deploy technology to permit that telecommuting to be productive (See my post of May 30, 2006: telecommuting with 5 references.). An item in...

Benefits of choosing a firm to handle a trial, even if that firm didn?t handle the litigation

Posted on December 14, 2008
Sometimes General Counsel feel it is appropriate to bring in a ?hired gun? to take the lead at trial. Skill at trial advocacy is all well and good but to insert a lawyer not intimately familiar with the facts, people,...

XML tags on documents in a contract management system

Posted on December 14, 2008
A website has a useful explanation of XML tags as applied to portfolios of contracts. ?The basic mission of XML is that it can make whole documents visible and meaningful to machines. And not just a snapshot of high level...

Associates on tracks that have different expectations for them as to billable hours

Posted on December 14, 2008
At a panel on diversity, reported in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 18, a partner from Patton Boggs, Mary Beth Bosco, explained that her firm has three tracks for associates, based on the hours they are expected to bill....

Generational diversity in law departments

Posted on December 14, 2008
Some people break down the current workforce into four groups: ?Traditionalists, baby boomers, generation X, and generation Y (sometimes referred to as the Millennial generation).? These generalizations (pun fully intended) cast a wide shadow (See my post of June 13,...

Bring your key firms together at a conference to build momentum for change

Posted on December 14, 2008
Last spring, Pfizer hosted a Diversity Summit for members of its Pfizer Partnership Program of outside counsel. As described by a Pfizer lawyer in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 18, ?We had an open, engaging discussion regarding the retention...

Unheralded drawbacks from reliance on very large law firms

Posted on December 11, 2008
Publications and conferences dote on the largest law firms (See my post of Feb. 20, 2008: two law firms break $2 billion in fees; and June 18, 2007: references on this blog to ?Magic Circle? firms.). The big shots garner...

An odd comment on why law departments insist on hourly billing

Posted on December 11, 2008
Matt Homann wrote a post on his blog, The [Non]Billable Hour, ten ?rules? about hourly billing. I thought that was a promising topic, but found the entries to be mostly clever, quasi-aphorisms. But one caught by eye: ?Sophisticated clients who...

Dedicate a person to push an initiative and have more confidence that something will happen

Posted on December 11, 2008
In 2006, the General Counsel of Accenture, Douglas Scrivner, created a part-time position within his Legal Group specifically designed to focus on its internal and external diversity initiatives (See my post of Jan. 14, 2007: Accenture?s expectations of outside counsel...

Committees in law departments for management initiatives

Posted on December 11, 2008
To make sure initiatives in law departments are carried out, general counsel often appoint committees. For example, as described in 8-K, Vol. 4, Fall 2008 at 15, the legal division of Pfizer has a very active Diversity Committee. In fact,...

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