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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

New-lawyer orientation: on-boarding and its value

Posted on April 06, 2008
Once a year, all newly-hired General Electric lawyers are put through a three-day orientation. The orientation tells them about the huge law department?s various practice areas, their roles, players and functions. ?In the second half of the program, new attorneys...

A partner premium, but nothing paid for associates

Posted on April 06, 2008
For some matters that are very sophisticated, give some thought to a radical alternative for your billing arrangement. Agree with the partner whose work you want most on the matter to pay that partner a reasonably significant premium on his...

Benchmarking law against other staff departments in a company

Posted on April 06, 2008
If a company tracks total spending by staff functions ? IT, Facilities, HR, and Finance ? as a percentage of revenue, then each function can show relative performance over time as a benchmark against the other functions (See my posts...

Fee arrangements and the varying profitability of law-firm practice groups

Posted on April 06, 2008
Survey findings in Law Firm Inc., Vol. 6, March/April 2008 at 19, include data from 70 chief financial officers of the Am Law 200. One chart reports on practice group profitability. The three practices ranked as most lucrative were ?Litigation?...

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Will legal directories diminish the value of the general counsel?

Posted on April 04, 2008
An article in Legal Week, Vol. 10, March 6, 2008 at 13, makes the point that general counsel play down how useful legal directories can be. The author ascribes their putdowns not to the weaknesses of directories as much as...

Quarrels with chemistry as a basis for law-firm selection

Posted on April 04, 2008
In-house counsel who select law firms for matters always talk about the importance of chemistry. ?We want to like the people we work with,? they inevitably intone. No one can deny that if all things were equal, it is more...

A better technique to rank law firms on their RFP metrics

Posted on April 04, 2008
Whenever law firms submit metrics in a competitive bid, you can rank the firms on those metrics. For example, if you ask each firm to tell you how many lawyers they have practicing in a certain area of law, then...

Tinder for a tender subject ? law firms fired because of competitions and convergence

Posted on April 04, 2008
I have derided notions that there is a conflagration of firings of law firms (See my posts of Feb. 28, 2008: lack of responsiveness; and June 18, 2007: references cited.). I went so far as to publish an article about...

When lawyers use their laptops during meetings

Posted on March 31, 2008
In many high-tech companies, or perhaps I should say in many young companies, lawyers commonly bring their laptops to meetings. With power cables, LANs and WIFI networks readily available, the lawyers need never be electronically out of touch. They can...

This blog selected to be among Forbes? collection of business blogs

Posted on March 31, 2008
It is an honor for this blog, Law Department Management, to be chosen by Forbes for its best-of-business blogs. Over the past three years, I have accumulated more than 3,100 posts here. Around 300 people have signed up for RSS...

RFP ? Request for Proposal and Really Full of Posts

Posted on March 31, 2008
Many posts on Law Department Management concern Requests for Proposal (RFP), which are a popular tool of general counsel. Some general observations about RFPs have deserved comment (See my posts of Oct. 26, 2007: seven tips for more effective RFPs...

A PDF compilation of my recent articles on spending ? third of three collections

Posted on March 31, 2008
Two posts invited readers to download PDF collections of my recent articles (See my posts of March 5, 2008: five articles on productivity; and March 11, 2008: six articles on cost control). This final collection brings together six articles on...

Three bumps on the road to value pricing

Posted on March 31, 2008
A thoughtful article in Legal Week, Vol. 9, Dec 6, 2007 at 26, sorts through some of the difficulties of so-called value pricing. One is that the few words of the wise counsel may bring tremendous value, but many general...

The flip side of innovation is risk aversion

Posted on March 31, 2008
No one can carry out a new idea who is too afraid of failure. Risk shadows novelty, so as much as we prate about the benefits of creativity (See my post of Nov. 24, 2007: creativity in-house and click here...

When lawyers use their laptops during meetings

This blog selected to be among Forbes??? collection of business blogs

RFP ??? Request for Proposal and Really Full of Posts

A PDF compilation of my recent articles on spending ??? third of three collections

Three bumps on the road to value pricing

The flip side of innovation is risk aversion

Cottage industry: lawyers who consult on compliance, corporate governance, and ethics

Posted on March 26, 2008
The whole topic of compliance, ethics, risk management and governance has attracted much attention and drawn consultants. Three of them known to me are Linda DiSantis of EthicsLINC, Rick Wolf of Lexakos, and Debra Sabatini Hennley of Compliance & Ethics...

To get right to the point, you are what you write

Posted on March 26, 2008
How a lawyer writes mirrors how that person thinks. Depth of understanding, force of reasoning, and clarity of expression all blaze from a person?s pen. This blog has connected effective writing to effective lawyering in various ways (See my posts...

Should you track the point where your law department is brought in on a matter? No

Posted on March 26, 2008
I lately read an intriguing idea: report the stage at which the law department is first involved in important matters. It would be easy enough for the responsible lawyer, when setting up a new matter in a management system, to...

It matters how you define matters and files

Posted on March 26, 2008
Much management of in-house teams depends on the term ?matter.? For instance, managing attorneys often assign work according to matters (the British ?file?) and visualize workloads by numbers of matters on someone?s desk (See my post of March 26, 2007:...

Questions to consider when you think you might create a written policy

Posted on March 26, 2008
It falls trippingly from the tongue: ?Let?s draft and circulate a policy.? Say, for instance, a policy on when to close matters stored on a matter management system. The fundamental question is whether the effort to draft, communicate, and enforce...

Document-clustering software that reduces the costs of discovery

Posted on March 26, 2008
The bubbling cauldron that is electronic discovery these days intimidates me. Unless you are immersed in this turbulent field, the enormous variety of offerings and competing claims for excellence can deter even the most confident blogger. That said, it does...

Knowledge management efforts and technology at Cisco Systems

Posted on March 26, 2008
A post by David Hobbie about an International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) session on Aug. 22, 2007, describes some of the knowledge management initiatives of Cisco?s Law Department. Cisco has 130 lawyers in the Silicon Valley and 230 total legal...

Technology and Six Sigma applied to a flood of hard-copy invoices

Posted on March 26, 2008
A post by David Hobbie about an International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) session on Aug. 22, 2007, describes some of the initiatives of Liberty Mutual?s law department. That department handles 1,600 law firms that submit electronic bills, yet they it...

A closer look at the physical appearance of in-house counsel

Posted on March 26, 2008
All of us form quick impressions, as well as many lasting impressions, based on someone?s appearance (See my posts of Nov. 9, 2006: advantages of height; Feb. 1, 2007 #2: height and intelligence; and April 7, 2006: looks and height.)....

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #69 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on March 25, 2008
Legal services as a percentage of revenue. From Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (Penguin Books 1995) at 219: "[L]egal services, which accounted for only 0.6% of gross domestic product in 1960, accounted for 1.39% in...

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