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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

Sycophancy and flattery by outside counsel

Posted on August 29, 2008
In some consulting projects I have spoken with partners at the primary firms of my client law department. The hope has been that they will identify aspects of the law department that can improve. Usually, however, what the partners say...

Eye-popping cost of gathering lawyers from around the globe for a legal conference

Posted on August 29, 2008
A profile of Kellye Walker, North American general counsel of beverage-giant Diageo, in Legal Times, Vol. 30, Aug. 20, 2007, mentions that entire law department held its legal conference in Shanghai. Diageo?s legal department totals approximately 80 lawyers...

Are lawyers, professionals in every sense of that term, also intellectuals?

Posted on August 29, 2008
Frank Furedi, Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone: Confronting 21st Century Philistinism (Continuum 2004) at 38-41, discusses the differences between professionals and intellectuals. ?The mental work of the professional is focused on the provision of services, not the promotion of...

Ten reasons why general counsel refuse to complete benchmarking surveys

Posted on August 29, 2008
Struggling through another benchmarking project that requires persuading general counsel to release a paltry few metrics, I turned empathic. Why is it so difficult for consultants to collect benchmark metrics from other law departments on behalf of a client (See...

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What if US law departments upped their management game significantly

Posted on August 29, 2008
Listening to John Lennon, my mind took a perverse turn and wondered what if general counsel in the US suddenly, all over, transformed themselves into wonderful managers. Fewer in-house counsel, I imagined, because they would be much more productive, insightful,...

Dilbert lampoons in-house counsel

Posted on August 29, 2008
Cartoons are sometimes no laughing matter, and one in the LA Times, Aug. 28, 2008 at C2, hurt. Scott Adams www.dilbert.com shows in panel one of Dilbert the hapless guy with the flat head and tie flipping up speaking to...

A full load of posts on fully loaded costs per internal lawyer hour

Posted on August 27, 2008
Previous posts have addressed different aspects of the fully-loaded cost per hour of corporate counsel (See my post of Oct.18, 2005: how to calculate a fully-loaded cost per lawyer hour; Nov. 16, 2005: links to other posts; Nov. 16, 2005:...

A wide vocabulary allows precision, but this paragraph is ridiculous

Posted on August 27, 2008
Fascinated as I am with vocabulary, I relished this paragraph. It comes from a book by Laurance Urdang, a word-lover who died recently and was eulogized in the NY Times, Aug. 26, 2008 at C10 (See my post of Aug....

Rawls? ?original position? and the values general counsel should support

Posted on August 27, 2008
John Rawls, one of the foremost American philosophers, urges us to think about justice from a standpoint he calls the original position. As explained in Susan Neiman?s Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grownup Idealists (Harcourt 2008) at 212, the original....

Management priorities of law departments in Belgium

Posted on August 27, 2008
At the start of this summer, the consultancy of Barend Blond� and Antoine Henry de Frahan asked in-house counsel in Belgium to select their top three management priorities out of a list of ten options. Here are the six priorities...

Blog posts on the next five largest corporations, and the regrettable absence of non-US departments

Posted on August 27, 2008
Debuting on the stage of law department metrics, blog posts per trillion dollars of revenue will almost certainly have a short run (See my post of Aug. 25, 2008: five largest corporations in the world.). Always striving to advance research,...

Closely linking posts on law departments that partner with key law firms

Posted on August 27, 2008
Partnering with law firms gets a huge play in the law-department press. Several law departments, in addition to DuPont, have publicized their close relationships with their key firms (See my post of March 12, 2007: Pfizer?s Partnering Program; May 3,...

Subpoenas arrive constantly, and law departments have to deal with them

Posted on August 27, 2008
Every company receives subpoenas for information, often because of a law suit between parties unrelated to the company one of which wants documents. Commonly, also, there are employment-related subpoenas. Large companies can be subpoenaed other than regarding employees several times...

Whether larger law departments slot work more cost-effectively to law firms

Posted on August 27, 2008
A quote in a recent article set me thinking. The writer was discussing the cost advantage larger departments have over smaller ones, in terms of lower total legal costs as a percentage of annual revenue. My thoughts on why total...

Various levels in a law department and posts about their compensation

Posted on August 27, 2008
I reviewed the various components of compensation earlier but realized that I have additional posts on general counsel, attorneys, paralegals, and other levels (See my post of Aug. 21, 2008: compensation components with 19 references; and March 15, 2005: comp...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #78 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on August 27, 2008
Joint law and business degrees in-house. The general counsel of Blackboard Inc., Matthew Small, graduated with a joint JD/MBA from the University of Connecticut. In 2008, according to Inside Counsel, Aug. 2008 at 49, Small was named chief business officer...

The goodly scope of pro bono projects

Posted on August 25, 2008
A legal department that encourages its members to provide pro bono services undoubtedly can find an infinite number of outlets. Perhaps a general counsel needs to set out some guidelines; perhaps it is more in the spirit of public service...

Internal surveys of law department members as a tool to gather information

Posted on August 25, 2008
Here is an example of how to use a survey of the law department. Boehringer Ingelheim began its pro bono program more than five years ago. Since the start of the program, approximately 30 percent of the legal department has...

Black Book Survey of legal process outsourcing by the Brown-Wilson Group

Posted on August 25, 2008
More than 80 legal process outsourcing (LPO) vendors competed for recognition in this year?s Black Book Survey, according to Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Aug. 2008 at 34. I have not seen the survey, but from the short announcement in...

Lawyers are often tagged as reluctant to run risks

Posted on August 25, 2008
The received wisdom is that lawyers are by personality, training, or position quite cautious. In two words, they are risk averse (See my post of April 12, 2006: risk aversion and personality styles; Nov. 22, 2007: research findings about lawyer...

Should law departments be responsible for litigation-support data maps?

Posted on August 25, 2008
A fundamental step for companies that want to be prepared for discovery of electronic documents is to prepare what is known as a data map (See my post of April 13, 2008: law department customized data mapping software.). As explained...

Posts per trillion dollars on the world?s five largest corporations

Posted on August 25, 2008
Finding a new listing of the global Fortune 500, I took a quick look at how many posts I have published about the top five. Wal-Mart = 11 (See my post of Nov. 6, 2005: fixed-fee arrangements; Sept. 22, 2005:...

Worries about junior associates, many of whom are sleep deprived

Posted on August 25, 2008
This blog does bang on about the drawbacks of relying on junior associates in law firms (See my post of May 11, 2007: associates and complaints about them with 13 references.) In-house managers believe newbie associates don?t know enough, work...

Part XVI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on August 21, 2008
I offer ten more embedded metaposts with URL links (See my post of Aug. 17, 2008: Part XV.) along with the number of posts or other references cited within them. 1. Lobbying and government affairs (See my post of Aug....

Main leisure activities while people are at work

Posted on August 21, 2008
Lost in debates about chargeable hours and productivity of in-house counsel is the human truth sometimes they look up from their in-box. The American, July/Aug. 2008 at 29, pulls together data from America Online and Salary.com regarding how American workers...

It pays to understand the multiple components of legal department compensation

Posted on August 21, 2008
Compensation as that term applies to legal departments has many components. I have assembled below some posts on five of them (See my post of July 21, 2008: compensation accounts for largest portion of a law department?s internal budget; and...

Consultants to law departments and new services

Posted on August 21, 2008
Journalists call me from time to time and I always like talking with them. They usually know about some situation that is new to me and they ask good questions. They make me think. Sherry Karabin called a while back...

A general counsel and her litigation team decamp en masse for a law firm

Posted on August 21, 2008
After six years as the general counsel of Affymetrix, Barbara Caulfield resigned and joined Dewey & LeBoeuf. Nothing unusual, but she brought with her three litigation lawyers from the law department. This news in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, July 2008...

Work-life balance in law departments

Posted on August 21, 2008
Some companies and some general counsel agitate for a workplace that recognizes there are things in people?s lives other than in-boxes, conference calls, and meetings. These enlightened advocates recognize the whole person, and seek a better balance between the demands...

The grandee of metrics ? total legal spend as a percentage of revenue

Posted on August 21, 2008
Total legal spending as a percentage of revenue (TLS/Rev) leads the metrics pack in terms of importance. I have written an article about some aspects of that figure. Click here for my article on TLS and many posts after its...

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