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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

Try an alternate reality game (ARG) at your next lawyers? retreat

Posted on February 25, 2008
Alternate reality games (ARGs) are immersive, massively multiplayer experiences that unfold for the participants over days, weeks or months (See my post of Nov. 18, 2007: online gaming worlds as a way to train in-house counsel.). As described in the....

Exercise jogs a lawyer?s brain

Posted on February 25, 2008
To upgrade the mental capabilities of in-house counsel, encourage them to sweat. A fast-beating heart is a high RPM brain. Exercise ?improves the blood?s access to specific brain regions and stimulates learning cells to make brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF,...

Practice area benchmarks for seven practices

Posted on February 25, 2008
We lack reliable benchmark metrics for practice areas of law departments (See my posts of July 20, 2005 and May 28, 2005 on this missing set of metrics.). A few, though, have appeared on this blog. Contracts (See my post...

How much time do in-house attorneys waste in a typical day?

Posted on February 25, 2008
The Gallup Organization conducted a large survey in August, 2007, which American Magazine thereafter compiled. Parts of that compilation are in the business section of the NY Times, Feb. 23, 2008. "When asked how much time their colleagues waste during...

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Thoughts on this blog?s third anniversary

Posted on February 25, 2008
Hold the confetti, but do drop me a line. Three years ago, on Feb. 20, 2005, Law Department Management made its debut. Three years on, this blog offers 3,049 posts. In a Word file the blizzard runs over 1,000 pages....

Context-specific data from the internet to supplement information in matter management systems

Posted on February 24, 2008
Joe Bookman, the founder of PinHawk, offers an intriguing prediction in Law Tech. News, Feb. 2008, at 30. Bookman foresees that over the next year or so law-department matter-management systems will start to integrate with internet monitoring software...

Analytical tools to help customize legal fees for clients

Posted on February 24, 2008
A development in the future, according to Law Tech. News, Feb. 2008, at 30, will be "business intelligence ? used to develop pricing and alternative fees? (See my posts of Jan. 25, 2007: business intelligence and data mining; May 17,...

Upscale research into how large companies purchase corporate legal services

Posted on February 24, 2008
The Program on the Legal Profession, based at Harvard Law School, is collaborating with the American Bar Foundation (ABF) on a project to examine the processes by which the legal departments of large corporations go about finding, selecting, and evaluating...

Information architecture ? ?the art and science of organizing electronic information?

Posted on February 24, 2008
The term ?information architecture? appears in David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Henry Holt 2007) at 47. Weinberger defines it as ?the art and science of organizing electronic information.? On this blog, the information...

A podcast by this blogger on how to improve your department?s RFP processes

Posted on February 24, 2008
The Corporate Counsel Network invited me to pull together some of my recommendations for law departments on how to do better with requests for proposals. I did so ten days ago and here is a link to the seven-minute podcast....

General counsel need to know the legal positions and actions of companies with shared directors

Posted on February 24, 2008
My friend Paul Lippe, head of Legal OnRamp, makes an interesting point. It is not enough for a general counsel to know the legal ins and outs of a situation. Nor is it enough to also know the situation?s business...

Dictation with a personal digital assistant

Posted on February 23, 2008
I have been an enthusiast of dictation and voice recognition (See my posts March 17, 2006: higher pay to stenos than to digital equipment transcribers; Aug. 26, 2005: voice recognition software as a chimera; Nov. 20, 2006: voice recognition software;...

Special steps taken to protect attorney-client privilege for in-house litigators

Posted on February 23, 2008
The general counsel of Affymetrix, Barbara Caulfield, decided that she could increase efficiencies and save money if her law department handled IP litigation internally (See my post of Feb. 9, 2008: don?t ?manage? litigation, handle it.). An article in IP...

Annual average increases in outside-counsel hourly rates

Posted on February 23, 2008
During each of the three years 2004-06, the hourly rates of US outside counsel increased on average 5.6 percent. Specifically, they rose 6 percent in 2006, 5.2 percent in 2005, and 5.7 percent in 2004, according to the 2007 ACC/Serengeti...

Unbalanced focus on high-end billing rates

Posted on February 23, 2008
The 2007 ALM Research Survey Report on Billing Rates & Practices summarizes data from 5,058 law-firm respondents. From this group, which I assume to be reasonably representative of law firms in the United States that are not large, the average...

Different interpretations of block billing

Posted on February 23, 2008
So-called ?block billing? happens when a lawyer in a law firm consolidates more than one task into a time sheet description and states the number of hours billed for the entire block. Law departments do not like block billing because...

The average Fortune 500 lawsuit takes three years to resolve

Posted on February 23, 2008
A fascinating article by the President of eLawForum, John Henry, published in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, Feb. 2008 at 28, draws on data from more than 20,000 cases. One conclusion is that US companies allow lawsuits to drag on...

A warped cost driver: outside counsel who put in long hours (big bills) and thereby get referrals

Posted on February 21, 2008
An off-hand remark by a partner, quoted in Of Counsel, Vol. 27, Feb. 2008 at 3, snapped me to attention. Kevin Newsom was describing his having been hired to handle a case for the Governor of Alabama that will be...

College of Law Practice InnovAction Award for law departments

Posted on February 21, 2008
The College of Law Practice Management (of which I am a member) sponsors the InnovAction Award, which is designed to identify and honor innovation in law practice management. If your legal department has done something innovative - whether with technology,...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #66 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on February 21, 2008
Judges who become general counsel. The general counsel of Affymetrix, Barbara Caulfield, left the US District Court bench to become the top lawyer for that gene chip pioneer (IP Law & Bus., Vol. 6, Feb. 2008 at 9). Likewise, in...

A panel selection in Britain and a conference for the panel firms

Posted on February 21, 2008
The legal department of Britain?s Sainsbury recently chose a panel of 11 law firms to serve for an initial three-year period. Previously, the department had informal relationships with around 20 law firms. The department invited thirty firms to compete for...

Compensation increases for in-house lawyers in the UK

Posted on February 21, 2008
A survey conducted by Incomes Data Services, reported in Legal Week, Vol. 10, Jan. 24, 2008 at 3, found that the average salary for UK in-house lawyers was �114,658 (roughly $200,000). That average figure increased 6.8% from the corresponding figure....

Professional networking sites for in-house counsel

Posted on February 21, 2008
Online networking sites that in-house counsel might find useful seem to be surging. The promise of linking with other lawyers who have like interests is infectious. I have written about LinkedIn (See my post of Jan. 19, 2008.) as well...

PDAs and their boosts to productivity and personal time

Posted on February 21, 2008
A white paper published by BlackBerry cites (at 12) a 2004 study by Ipsos-Reid. Not surprisingly, the study found that those who use a BlackBerry become more productive. "The median and user reported recovering 47 minutes of productive time per...

General counsel don?t prolong litigation to spread costs over multiple years

Posted on February 20, 2008
?Delaying resolution [of a lawsuit] spreads defense costs into next year?s budget. A case with a defense cost of $75,000 per year for three years actually looks better than a case resolved in one year with a $100,000 defense cost.?...

The number one reason clients fire law firm is lack of responsiveness?

Posted on February 20, 2008
A white paper published by Blackberry, which was distributed at LegalTechNY, draws on data from a consultancy?s survey about what keeps clients satisfied and what dissatisfies them. The Blackberry report states (at 3) that the number one reason why clients...

Another way to spend your budget -- an Internet survey on brand confusion

Posted on February 20, 2008
It is apparently common for a company accused of infringing another company's trademark to survey shoppers in a mall, known as a ?mall intercept.? A mall intercept commonly costs tens of thousands of dollars according to IP Law & Bus.,...

Multitasking drags down lawyer productivity

Posted on February 20, 2008
The average person can only focus on four things at once. According to the Wall. St. J., Feb. 12, 2008 at B4, which summarizes research from a team at the University of Oregon, the ability to focus on more things...

Blogs by in-house lawyers or specifically for law departments

Posted on February 20, 2008
A number of blogs are written by in-house lawyers or specifically address in-house lawyers. The ones I know of I list below by host and affiliation: 1. Michael Dillon (Sun Microsystems) 2. Geoff Gussis (law firm, Riker Danzig) 3. Hannah...

The $2 billion US firm, Latham & Watkins, and thoughts on client influence over billionaire firms

Posted on February 20, 2008
The 2007 gross revenue of Latham & Watkins was just over $2 billion. As reported in the Wall St. J., Feb. 11, 2008 at B2, its profit per partner reached $2.27 million. Skadden Arps might also breach the $2 billion...

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