Law Department Management: In-House Counsel

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> In-House Counsel Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

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

A rationale for high fees paid for matter-influencing partners

Posted on October 19, 2008
A very smart general counsel shared with me an iconoclastic view. He argued that excellent partners only bill a fraction of the value they deliver and gave an example. Say your company has decided to buy a company for $100...

Cross-training to learn, improve productivity, and create flexibility in a law department

Posted on October 19, 2008
Nearly all law departments are staffed so leanly that little time exists for their busy lawyers to train backups. Lawyers fill specific roles, their plates are full, and there is not time to cross train someone just in case (See...

A dozen arguments against convergence

Posted on October 19, 2008
Lawyers who work for corporations object to convergence programs for many reasons. The ones I have heard include the following, listed roughly in order of their significance. 1. Geographic dispersion of our matters means we need firms admitted in many...

The costs to a law department of turnover

Posted on October 19, 2008
Turnover diminishes a department?s current capability, bench strength, and succession planning. When a good performer leaves, the loss blasts a hole in institutional knowledge, expertise and collegiality (See my post of May 14, 2005: turnover losses; June 15, 2005: costs...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Some findings about online professional networks for in-house counsel

Posted on October 12, 2008
Counsel to Counsel, Sept. 2008 at 18, has some findings on online professional networks. Based on a survey of 673 lawyers -- including 449 corporate counsel -- almost 50 percent are members of online networks and more than 40 percent...

Deliberately delaying payments on law firm invoices and automatic payments?

Posted on October 12, 2008
Several managing partners at big law firms moan about the ?molasses-paced payment process? at clients. The piece in the Am. Lawyer, Vol. 30, Sept. 2008 at 33, does not distinguish between clients with a law department and clients without, but...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #82 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on October 12, 2008
Examples of secondments. GC Cal., June 2008 at 23, has an article by Lorelie Laird ? in which a noted law department blogger is quoted ? that refers to several law departments that have taken advantage of secondments. Laird discusses...

A list that ranks law firms by capability and the methodology behind it

Posted on October 12, 2008
General counsel often want to know which law firms lead in various practice areas. One source of that information are the many surveys and lists that purport to rank law firms by their experience, capability, and performance. As another resource,...

Modest steps available to all law departments to improve the environment

Posted on October 12, 2008
Prof. Legal Mgt. Week Mag., 2008 at 62, proffers a number of ideas that all law departments could adopt to help the environment. The article urges every office to find out what they call its ?carbon footprint.? A carbon footprint...

Litigation management Part IV ? costs of litigation generally

Posted on October 12, 2008
Costs of litigation counsel, the largest external expense of law departments, causes constant worry among general counsel (See my post of Feb. 26, 2008: total cost of litigation for Fortune 500; June 6, 2006: more detail on Fortune 500 litigation...

Deeper knowledge of the law and its possible effect on risk aversion

Posted on October 11, 2008
Frank Furedi, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism (Continuum 2004) at 57, cites to two sociologists who "forcefully argue the case for the close association between the sense of risk and the increase of knowledge...

Use software to describe and understand your company?s ?patent landscape?

Posted on October 11, 2008
Part of a comprehensive patenting program is to create maps of an industry?s and company?s patent landscapes. A patent landscape visually portrays the number, strength, and relationships between the relevant patents and a company?s own patents. According to IP Law...

Law departments and their role in anti-counterfeiting activities

Posted on October 11, 2008
At a PLI conference, the General Counsel of Colgate-Palmolive dramatically pointed out that ?Counterfeit is the crime of the 21st century ? estimates run as high as around 10% of the world?s commerce.? If that estimate is anywhere near true,...

Three on-the-ground tips for better post-mortems

Posted on October 11, 2008
In an article on creativity, an author discusses postmortems held by Pixar, the movie studio, but his insights carry over to law departments. He believes that people learn from postmortems but don't like to conduct them. Most people would rather...

Rebuttal to bashing RFPs for rehearsed shows and swapped-out talent

Posted on October 11, 2008
At a recent panel, general counsel from several small law departments dumped on RFPs. As described in the Legal Intelligencer, Oct. 3, 2008 (by Zack Needles), one of them is put off by the ?dog-and-pony show? aspect of presentations. Another...

A role you do not want your relationship partner to assume: hub of the wheel

Posted on October 11, 2008
A general counsel on a recent panel criticized what he called a ?centralized attorney structure,? where all communication must go through the relationship partner of the law firm. That hub structure is especially inefficient if the partner is not personally...

Assistance from internal IT team for some e-discovery tasks

Posted on October 11, 2008
When faced with a discovery or investigation request, some law departments can turn to specialists within the company?s IT group. At one company, a group of specialists are known as the ?computer incidence response team? (CIRT) and they handle tech...

Patent litigation metrics and management techniques, but not costs

Posted on October 11, 2008
Many posts on this blog give insights into how law departments attempt to regulate the wallet-busting costs of patent litigation. A previous post pulled together 13 comments on costs (See my post of Oct. 2, 2008: patent litigation costs; July...

What exactly is corporate governance and how does it differ from the corporate secretary role?

Posted on October 10, 2008
Those who are responsible for corporate governance concern themselves with, among other issues, whether Board committees are made up of independent directors or whether a director has some relative who works for the independent auditor. More comprehensively, Corp...

Law departments as sponsors of conferences

Posted on October 10, 2008
An ad for the upcoming conference of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association lists 31 sponsors (as of July 18, 2008). Among the many law firms and other service providers to firms and law departments are three companies: Intel, American Airlines,....

Send in-house patent lawyers to sit periodically with researchers

Posted on October 10, 2008
According to IP Law & Bus., Vol. 6, Sept. 2008 at 42, one of the practices at 3M Co. is to have its patent lawyers "not only attend meetings of the management teams and operating committee, but even keep regular...

Power and control in a law department

Posted on October 10, 2008
?Control is a central theme in organization theory, economics, and business history,? according to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Bus. School Press 2006) at 68...

Activities to help you set priorities for how to spend your time

Posted on October 10, 2008
Amidst the geysers of work you face as an in-house lawyer, how can you turn the tap a bit and deal with the most important tasks and problems? Here are some ideas culled from various sources. 1) Think in terms...

After a competition, give constructive feedback to the firms not selected

Posted on October 10, 2008
You have put a number of firms through the wringer and picked one. The winner exults, the other firms gnash their teeth. The only fair step is to tell the disappointed firms why you did not pick them and give...

An overview of employee motivation from four perspectives

Posted on October 10, 2008
To some observers, motivation has four commonly measured workplace indicators: engagement, satisfaction, commitment, and intention to quit. These came from a recent issue of Talent Management and all apply to some degree to law departments. "Engagement represents the energy, effort,...

Multiple bundles of work and the advantages of firms bidding on more than one

Posted on October 10, 2008
Some law departments put out for bids from law firms more than one cluster of work in the same offering. The general counsel decides that if the department is going to soldier through a competitive bid process, it might as...

Ten reasons to refuse to indulge in competitive bids to select law firms

Posted on October 10, 2008
An earlier post lays out nine reasons why a general counsel might undertake a competitive bid process to select a law firm (See my post of Oct. 10, 2008: nine justifications to compete work.). Opposing those advantages, a like number...

Nine reasons to ask firms to compete for your assignments

Posted on October 10, 2008
So much do the drums beat in favor of competing work among law firms, general counsel might not pause to consider fully the many reasons for such an effort. Here are nine justifications, listed roughly in the order that I...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #81 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on October 07, 2008
Libor and a statistical technique for data. The London Rev. of Books, Sept. 25, 2008 at 11, explains that 16 banks call in their estimates of the interest rates at which their banks would borrow money. The group that calculates...

Three strategic objectives for an intellectual property group

Posted on October 07, 2008
According to IP Law & Bus., Sept. 2008 at 42, an IP department should agree with executive management as to the ultimate purposes of the department. I have paraphrased the three basic objectives. Inside patent lawyers might focus on "freedom...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Insurance Department Issues Second Annual Ohio Medical Liability Closed Claim Report
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Insurance has issued its secon...

Injury Verdict Upheld in Chicago Police Department Auto Accident
A verdict awarded from a personal injury case in Chicago against t...

Department Of State Update on Implementation of E3 Visas for Australians
Our office receives many questions about when the new E-3 visa cat...