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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

Some manifestations of a dysfunctional law department

Posted on February 12, 2008
All law departments have warts. Some, to be sure, are more unsightly or even destructive than others. If management problems are bad enough, the department might become in some aspects dysfunctional. A few but by no means all of the...

Management by walking around ? a badge of honor for good leaders

Posted on February 12, 2008
General counsel are most effective when they talk frequently and informally with their colleague lawyers (See my post of Sept. 25, 2006: open-door attitudes of general counsel.). To be continually closeted in meetings and barricaded behind closed doors is to...

Law department silos in structure and operations

Posted on February 09, 2008
Many law departments operate to some degree as a loose confederacy of silos (See my post of March 1, 2007 on the risks of compartmentalized legal practices.). Groups of lawyers within silos [vertical reporting lines] burrow on with little sharing...

The challenges and rewards of content analysis for survey responses

Posted on February 09, 2008
Multiple-choice questions on surveys of law departments are ubiquitous yet problematic (See my posts of June 16, 2007 on MECE; Dec. 3, 2007 for five improvements; and Dec. 20, 2005 on wording.). An alternative form of question asks respondents for...

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Most US law departments are small ? about 60 percent have five or fewer lawyers

Posted on February 09, 2008
When we think about law departments, we usually think of departments of some bulk, those with management issues, resources to address them, and some flexibility in how they decide to operate (See my post of Nov. 19, 2007 on the...

A law department whose lawyers ?never say no?

Posted on February 09, 2008
A general counsel, speaking recently to a large group of in-house lawyers, proudly explained that in his law department, ?Our lawyers never say ?no? to clients.? Lest you be concerned about such patsies who abdicate their checks-and-balances role, he hastened...

Adverse selection as it applies to law departments

Posted on February 09, 2008
Adverse selection applies to those who manage law departments. First, however, a short explanation of the term. One example of adverse selection is where more people who need insurance buy it and healthy people forego it. An incentive system drives...

Twenty-seven software packages for law departments, other than basic programs

Posted on February 09, 2008
The dominant software used in-house are word processing and e-mail/calendar, followed far behind by matter management, document management, spreadsheets and presentation software. My blog has discussed 27 types of specialized software. What else might a law department use? 1...

Why in-house litigators should actually litigate, not just ?manage? litigation

Posted on February 09, 2008
A speaker at a recent session urged the law department attendees not to have litigation lawyers in their departments who only direct outside counsel (See my post of Aug. 21, 2005 regarding not hiring a head of litigation.). His belief...

What gifts and of what value can law department lawyers ethically accept?

Posted on February 07, 2008
Law firms and service providers like to wine and dine in-house counsel and administrators who have purchasing power. It?s called marketing and sometimes the costs of tickets to a ballet or seats at a big game can be expensive. Other...

Track client usage of legal documents on your intranet site

Posted on February 07, 2008
When you post documents on a legal intranet, many intranet packages can tell you how many times clients download them (See my posts of March 1, 2007 #3 about Honeywell?s legal intranet; and March 13, 2007 on mini-intranet sites.). If...

The math that explains why a crowd of laymen can outdo a small group of experts

Posted on February 07, 2008
The fact that groups consistently outperform individuals is well documented. This outcome rests on the statistical principle of the Law of Large Numbers. According to an enlightening article in Cal. Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Fall 2007 at 153, "This principle...

More disadvantages of low attrition rates in law departments

Posted on February 07, 2008
The other day the general counsel of a huge subsidiary bemoaned his department?s attrition rate of only about four percent per year. In this 400+-person group, he would actually like more people to turn over as he could then ?refresh?...

Large law departments yet nary an administrator in sight

Posted on February 07, 2008
Benchmark data tells us that the tipping point for having a full-time administrator is around 10 to 15 lawyers. In that range, more departments have an administrator than do not have one (See my posts of April 8, 2005 on...

Infrastructure in a law department is tangible and doesn?t move

Posted on February 07, 2008
In the context of law department management, let?s try a definition by examples of ?infrastructure.? Unlike people, who come and go during the day, for long periods of time a law department?s infrastructure stays in place. Hence, file rooms and...

An excursus on ?productivity? compared to ?capacity?

Posted on February 07, 2008
This blog is flush with posts that touch on law department productivity. Productivity has to do with how much output results from a given amount of input (See my post of April 27, 2006 on 20 economic terms.). For our...

Total legal spending declines with revenue growth, and my recent article explains why

Posted on February 06, 2008
Having written post after post on total legal spending by companies and having tried to cover all the permutations of what can go into such figures, I began to wonder about total legal spending and the revenue of companies. Wondering...

Nine ways to improve your guidelines for outside counsel

Posted on February 06, 2008
No self-respecting law department lacks its statement of principles and operating rules for its law firms. Many posts on this blog have commented on these outside counsel guidelines (See my posts of Dec. 17, 2007 on the profusion of outside...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #64 ? Additions to earlier posts

Posted on February 06, 2008
A partner in a law department who consults on e-discovery. Ralph C. Losey, Co-Chair, e-Discovery Group, at Akerman Senterfitt, wrote to me about his involvement in e-discovery. He handles e-discovery issues in litigation too, but prefers the services he provides...

General counsel compensation rises about $100,000 for every five-to-ten lawyers, up to 25

Posted on February 06, 2008
To earn more, general counsel need to supervise larger legal departments, according to a 2007 survey by Altman Weil. For general counsel in one-lawyer departments, the median cash compensation was $200,000, according to Law.com. The survey shows median pay climbed...

Google at LegalTech NY and its possible forays into law-department software

Posted on February 06, 2008
Stalking the aisles of vendors at LegalTech NY I was surprised to see a Google booth. I learned that 50 of the AmLaw 100 law firms use Google?s Postini software to pre-filter emails ? to remove spam. But this is...

A new matter management system, used by major global law departments, from Brazil

Posted on February 06, 2008
At LegalTech NY I ran across Tedesco Tecnologia, a 13-year-old Brazilian software firm that offers an ASP matter management system for law departments. It has law departments using its software in 32 countries, including Air Liquide, Whirlpool S/A ? Brasil,...

Multiple regression analysis: an example from a law department with customer arbitrations

Posted on February 04, 2008
At a panel, a financial-services company?s general counsel described a study he carried out regarding customer arbitrations. The general counsel had staff pull one out of eight arbitrations at random going back 12 years and compile approximately 50 data points...

A metric for corporate secretary functions: cost per entity maintained

Posted on February 04, 2008
Every law department or corporate-secretary function can establish how many corporate entities they maintain around the world. Both can determine, at least approximately, the costs in time ? at fully-loaded hourly rates ? and other expenses ? such as the...

What is the meaning of ?Center of Excellence?

Posted on February 04, 2008
At a recent panel, a senior lawyer with General Electric said his department has set up ?Centers of Excellence.? He likened the Centers to shared services groups (See my posts of Dec. 31, 2006 on law departments as shared services...

Benchmarks: posts after my article on three key benchmarks

Posted on February 04, 2008
In November of last year, I published an article in Legal Times about the three most important benchmarks for law departments: total legal spending as a percentage of revenue, the fully-loaded cost of inside counsel, and total legal staff per...

An alleged unwillingness of in-house counsel to go to trial except for very important cases

Posted on February 04, 2008
A consultant?s article in Of Counsel, Vol. 27, Jan. 2008 at 8, argues that for several reasons law firms are facing a decline in litigation. Large firms are not referring cases, tort reform is reducing litigiousness, and ?there seems to...

Visits to and from other departments as a way to benchmark practices

Posted on February 04, 2008
When I was an in-house consultant for Merck?s law department, GE Medical Systems invited us to take part in a benchmarking exercise. What was unusual about the effort was that GE Medical sent four of its lawyers to spend a...

Part IV of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them

Posted on February 03, 2008
This post continues my three previous ones on metaposts, in alphabetical order, with their URL links on this blawg (See my posts of Feb. 3, 2008.). Happiness (June 20, 2007) High potentials (July 29, 2007 ? 10 posts) Knowledge of...

Part III of a collection of metaposts: 10 more of them

Posted on February 03, 2008
This post continues my two previous ones on metaposts with URL links (See my posts of Feb. 3, 2008 with a total of 20 other links.). Email productivity (Nov. 6, 2006 ? 6 posts) Engagement letters (Feb. 20, 2007 ?...

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