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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

Three thoughts about best practices for law departments

Posted on March 04, 2008
Implicit in the claim that something is a ?best practice? is the assumption that another department?s circumstances are the same and problem is the same. Then the transplanted practice will take root and flourish. What may be a best practice...

Law departments should not charge ahead with internal time charge backs

Posted on March 04, 2008
Most law departments charge back to business units a significant portion of the outside counsel fees paid on their behalf (See my posts of Feb. 27, 2008: practices of Time Warner Cable; and July 31, 2006: goal of 100% of...

How much does industry profitability influence in-house compensation?

Posted on March 04, 2008
It seems plausible to me that there is a correlation between average profit margins of industries and average in-house pay (See my posts of March 24, 2005: differences between industries; and April 8, 2007: highly-paid practice areas.). Companies in industries...

Law departments of corporate spin-offs often need to add specialist lawyers

Posted on March 02, 2008
Spectra Energy Corp., a huge natural gas transmission company, recently spun off from Duke Power. When that happened, Spectra?s legal team had 19 attorneys and 12 support staff in five offices throughout the U.S. and Canada. As a result of...

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Observations about the profusion of surveys that invite law departments to respond

Posted on March 02, 2008
Many organizations want to survey law departments. In my recent gargantuan collection, I listed 72 of my posts during 2007 that drew on a survey of law departments, most of which surveys had been conducted that year (See my post...

Surveys of law departments written about on this blog during 2007

Posted on March 02, 2008
Surveys of law departments go on all the time (See my post of Oct, 17, 2005 on the plethora of law-department surveys.), and I implore readers to send word of any to me. I warmly embrace every survey of law...

Hard-to-find, useful metrics on the frequency and cost of expert witnesses

Posted on March 02, 2008
As I have mentioned, the Round Table Group is a leading firm to help locate and manage expert witnesses (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008.). Steve Schott of the Group was kind enough gather some information for Law Department...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #67 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on March 02, 2008
In-house blogs and bloggers. Bill Heinze, host of IP-Updates, was formerly a Patent Procurement Counsel for GE Energy. The Patry Copyright Blog is hosted by William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel at Google Inc. (See my post of Feb. 20, 2008:...

To set targets is not as effective as to promote behaviors

Posted on March 02, 2008
To translate a piece in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, Dec. 2007 at 101, to law departments, the point is that general counsel can set targets for lawyers to achieve, such as the reduction of outside counsel firms to...

A retrospective on invoice review

Posted on March 02, 2008
Most in-house lawyers at some point have to review bills from outside law firms (See my posts of Nov. 3, 2005: standardized practices (July 16, 2005: one of the most popular methods of controlling outside counsel costs.). Even with a...

A second book on the history of New York City?s law department

Posted on March 01, 2008
Walter Olson writes on the blog Point of Law that the New York Law Journal and the New York City Law Department have collaborated to publish a new book entitled "Fighting for the City: A History of the New York...

In-house counsel do get laid off in hard times

Posted on March 01, 2008
The Directors Roundtable invited the general counsel of Ford Motor, David Leitch, to speak at a gathering in late 2007, and a Nat?l L.J., Vol. 30, Jan. 28, 2008 advertising supplement published his remarks. Leitch mentions that Ford, which has...

Conference room reservation systems

Posted on March 01, 2008
In law departments that have a number of conference rooms, members of the department often find it nettlesome to manage reservations of those rooms. People reserve a room, and then cancel or shorten their time. Others plan to use their...

More sources of online information about law departments -- BlogPulse

Posted on March 01, 2008
I spent some time recently on Nielsen?s BlogPulse. The site lets you search for terms on the blogosphere (See my post of July 20, 2005: legal blogosphere.). On February 26th BlogPulse proclaimed that it had identified 73,759,332 blogs (yes, 73...

A troubling conjecture about cost creep with procured services

Posted on March 01, 2008
An article about services supply management in Cal. Mgt. Rev., Vol. 49, Summer 2007 at 53, cites a study by a financial services company. The company found that its actual temporary labor prices were 6.2 percent higher than what the...

Getting a fix on fixed fees

Posted on March 01, 2008
This blog has come at the topic of fixed fees from a flexibly broad range of perspectives. Some posts have focused on terminology (See my posts of Nov. 22, 2006: ?capped fees? vs. ?fixed fees?; Nov. 6, 2005: per case...

Where?s the luster of DuPont in light of its metrics on legal spend and staff?

Posted on March 01, 2008
Volumes have been written on DuPont?s management initiatives to improve its law department?s effectiveness (See my post of June 30, 2006 on the marketing of law departments and four references to DuPont.) Hence, it caught my attention where a piece...

Litigation loads and handling cases in-house through trial

Posted on February 27, 2008
The general counsel of Ford Motor, David Leitch spoke recently to a group and his remarks are published in the Nat'l L.J., Vol. 30, Jan. 28, 2008. Leitch mentions that Ford Motor has about 13,000 cases pending against it. Up...

Part V of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on February 27, 2008
Since my last collection of posts that pull together related entries ? ?embedded metaposts? I call them ? I have added 10 more (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008: Part IV.). Here they are, with links. Administrators (See my...

Charging back clients for outside-counsel costs

Posted on February 27, 2008
Paul Roy, Director of Finance & Administration of Time Warner Cable?s Law Department, allocates to 20+ divisions and regional offices outside-counsel costs incurred by the Department on their behalf. His department charges back approximately 60 percent of its outside costs...

Fees owed to temp agencies when you hire someone they placed with your legal team

Posted on February 27, 2008
Law department managers who use temporary or contract attorneys may find that one of the lawyers does great work, fits right in, wants to join the department ? and there is an open position. If the law department hires the...

Fees owed to temp agencies when you hire someone they placed with your legal team

Developments and capabilities that would be useful for this blog

Posted on February 27, 2008
I would like to troll software tools that tell me about who is reading what on Law Department Management. During the past year I have shared what I have learned about the plumbing of this blawg (See my posts of...

The balance of my posts on balanced scorecards

Posted on February 26, 2008
A tool that some general counsel use to keep track of their key metrics is the balanced scorecard. A few posts on this weblog have poked and sniffed at balanced scorecards. Several law departments that actually user balanced scorecards are...

Fee arrangements based on future events can unravel if the law department changes goals

Posted on February 26, 2008
Risks exist for law firms who take on matters on a contingency-fee basis. As graphically described in Inside Counsel, Feb. 2008 at 16, if a client chooses down the road not to pursue what would make its law firm eligible...

Software from Exari that helps you prepare and manage contracts

Posted on February 26, 2008
At LegalTech NY this year, Exari handed out case studies about two law departments. Dow Jones? legal team can ?deliver tailored, self-service contracts to its global sales force? as a self-service option for subscription agreements. Westpac, an Australian financial services...

Total cost of litigation of Fortune 500 in 2006: $210 billion

Posted on February 26, 2008
This stunning estimate comes from eLawForum; even more dramatic, the article notes that $210 billion is one-third of the after-tax profits of the Fortune 500. The article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Feb. 2008 at 28, explains that the...

Every general counsel should stop the law department from doing inane, wasteful procedures

Posted on February 26, 2008
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, in his column for Talent Mgt., Jan. 2008 and 54, points out our bias to add on initiatives. He writes ?The recognition and reward systems in most enterprises are geared to acknowledge the doing of something. We...

More improvements to e-mail practices

Posted on February 25, 2008
From Hottopic, a publication of ARMA International at 7, come several shrewd pieces of advice about what to do before you hit the ?Send? button for an e-mail. (1) Check the recipients of the e-mail to be sure they are...

Service providers for bill and regulation tracking

Posted on February 25, 2008
Benchmark Legal Research LLC has an ad in Inside Counsel, Feb. 2008 at 40. I do not normally highlight individual service providers but the service Benchmark Legal provides was new for me. According to their ad, they track and report...

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