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

Experience curve theory and plausible applications in law departments

Posted on May 21, 2008
Research at various manufacturers has shown that as production doubles, the hours required to make something falls by a fairly consistent percentage, on the order of 10 to 30 percent. As volume builds, workers become more productive. Edward Russell-Walling, 50...

A small portion of anything accounts for a large portion of importance

Posted on May 21, 2008
It is entirely probably that 80 percent of the value in this blog ? perhaps wildly optimistic ? exists in 20 percent of the posts. Why not, since Pareto?s Rule crops up everywhere (See my post of June 27, 2007...

Activity-based costing (ABC) is hardly the alpha-to-omega of legal cost reporting

Posted on May 21, 2008
In 1987, Robert S. Kaplan and William Bruns introduced to business managers the tool of activity-based costing (ABC). The effort purports to trace indirect costs, such as legal ones, back to individual products or services, according to Edward Russell-Walling, 50...

A sensible percentage of lawyers who manage outside counsel?

Posted on May 21, 2008
At a company I know, roughly sixty percent of the lawyers in the large department manage outside counsel. When I found that out I felt surprised, and realized two things. First, there are no benchmark figures for the median percentage...

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

Challenge number one ? workload and time pressure?

Posted on May 21, 2008
A press release, dated March 14, 2008, for two groups, the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association (ACLA) and Corporate Lawyers Association of New Zealand (CLANZ), covers their Legal Department Benchmarking Report 2008. The release contains a statement about the top issue...

Twelve tools that purportedly help managers find and reduce costs

Posted on May 18, 2008
The following list comes from an article in Finance & Risk Mgt. Commentary, Oliver Wyman, Spring 2008 at 6. The article says that companies ought to master 16 ?tools to identify and manage costs.? Several of the tools seem irrelevant...

Do what seems to make sense, even if no other law department can be found that has tried it

Posted on May 18, 2008
For several years now I have chafed when clients respond to a recommendation with ?Who else does this?? Even though lawyers like to follow precedent and many of them are allergic to risks and change, I haven?t yet screwed up...

Law departments rarely benchmark processes

Posted on May 18, 2008
Most general counsel, when they think of benchmarks, have in mind only the typical ratios of numbers. Total legal spending as a percentage of revenue leads the parade (See my post of Dec. 19, 2007: within an industry.), followed by...

Help clients help themselves and your department?s productivity will increase

Posted on May 18, 2008
The more able your clients are to resolve legal issues, the more your law department can turn its attention to the most challenging and valuable legal tasks. Common names for the constellation of efforts to increase the legal capabilities of...

Collect data to report, but go beyond and use the data to make better decisions

Posted on May 18, 2008
The primary point of a database should be to allow managers in a law department to see the department?s work more clearly and to manage it more effectively ? to take better decisions ? based on the data (See my...

The back-office (and often hidden) costs of paying law firms

Posted on May 18, 2008
Several posts have zeroed in on aspects of the logistics of paying law firms (See my posts of March 26, 2008: Six Sigma and invoice processing; and March 2, 2008: invoice review and 25 references cited.). A handful have suggested...

Typing proficiency of in-house lawyers ? one secret to productivity

Posted on May 11, 2008
Good lawyers are good typists. Too bold a claim? If you lack keyboard proficiency, your productivity relative to your peers will lag. Critics ? Luddites actually ? used to suggest that expensive lawyers spent too much time typing and formatting...

Ask the partner who bills you to include on the bill time written off

Posted on May 11, 2008
An admonition in a column of Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 72, caught my eye. "Tell your outside providers to get in the habit of analyzing and vetting bills before sending them to you." Well, yes, of course....

Monthly flat fees for lengthy and expensive litigation; dubious as an alternative fee arrangement

Posted on May 11, 2008
A piece in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 71, states that law firms should propose set payments every month as an ?alternative fee arrangement? for costly, multi-year cases. ?This benefits the law firm during the valley times and...

?E-billing technology changes the way the law department does business.? Yeah right

Posted on May 11, 2008
?When correctly implemented, e-billing actually changes the way attorneys and support staff do business. Call it business process reengineering brought down to the legal department.? This optimistic claim comes from Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 75...

Typical in-house lawyer in the US can take a month of vacation each year

Posted on May 11, 2008
InsideCounsel, May 2008 at 61, reports that of the1200 in-house counsel who responded to its career satisfaction survey, nearly two-thirds of them (63.6%) get more than 15 vacation days annually. I assume that means the plurality gets four weeks per....

Comments on the methodology of survey results on morale boosters vs busters

Posted on May 11, 2008
For its biennial survey of career satisfaction, covered by InsideCounsel, May 2008 at 61, InsideCounsel obtained responses from 1,200 in-house counsel. One question asked them to choose from a list of 11 the MOST rewarding part of working in-house. A...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #71 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on May 11, 2008
Another co-general counsel department. Diane Genova and Travis Epes are co-general counsel of JPMorgan Chase, according to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 56 (See my post of June 16, 2007: Computer Associates? co-general counsel, and cites to Citigroup...

Are good general counsel transplantable to any industry?

Posted on May 11, 2008
In the business press you often read that a good executive will bring value to whatever industry that executive joins. General managerial ability rises above knowledge of a particular industry. If so, then to the same degree a general counsel...

Why it?s hard to reconcile your matter management system to your accounts payable system

Posted on May 11, 2008
Ideally, the system in the law department that tracks outside spending ought to produce the same numbers as the company?s accounts payable system. For many reasons, however, that correspondence doesn?t happen. Both systems would have to treat an invoice as...

The beneficence of quicker bill payment

Posted on May 11, 2008
When Johnson & Johnson?s law department got its e-billing system up and running, the department benefited from the ?reduction of confusion in payment,? according to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 75. The law department finance manager estimated that...

Six major universities, full of brains, but without a general counsel

Posted on May 08, 2008
In Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, May 2008 at 98-99, you can peruse a list of 90 ?top-ranked universities and the lawyers that head their legal departments.? In that illustrious grove of academe, however, lurk no less than six that lack...

Part VII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on May 08, 2008
Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of March 23, 2008: Part VI.) with the number of reference posts show in the parenthetical. 1. Bad behavior by managers (See my post of April 23, 2008 ?...

What is the difference between customized software and configured software?

Posted on May 08, 2008
When you customize software, someone writes new code. When you configure software, you rely on the code as written, but change field names, tables, arrangements on the screen, and other elements of the software (See my post of May 23,...

The key to improving your rate of learning is to correctly space practice sessions

Posted on May 08, 2008
How much and how quickly you can recall facts is one way to distinguish yourself as an in-house lawyer. Along with your time, your memory is your stock in trade. Fortunately, techniques exist that let you sharpen your memory (See...

Instant feedback after departmental meetings!

Posted on May 08, 2008
At Microsoft, including apparently in the law department, ?after every departmental meeting our employees use an online tool to react to what they heard and tell their departments? leaders how we?re doing.? This communication-enhancer is described by the general counsel...

Exporting reports from matter management systems to a spreadsheet

Posted on May 08, 2008
Matter management systems have ample reporting capabilities, but inevitably various people in legal departments want reports that are not producible from the canned set. The report formats that come with the package need to be tweaked. Or a pre-defined report...

A free, online site where you can experiment with neat ways to present data

Posted on May 08, 2008
IBM hosts a site, many-eyes.com, which lets a user upload data in a simple format and specify the parameters and type of graph desired (See my posts of May 3, 2008: eleven methods of data visualization; and May 7, 2008:...

Rebates from airlines to law firms and whether they should be passed through to clients

Posted on May 07, 2008
I spotted in one major law firm's engagement letter the following language: "Any rebates paid to the firm, based upon travel volume, are used to offset the direct costs assessed us by our independent travel agency." Doesn?t that statement dance...

Seven more visual methods to portray law department data

Posted on May 07, 2008
Earlier I summarized 11 ways to depict data visually (See my post of May 3, 2008: from a chart.). Since that time, I have dredged up seven more methods. Bubble charts, where the size of the bubble combines with the...

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...