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

?Trusted legal advisor? ? an overused cliché that in truth has rare application

Posted on March 27, 2011
At one time, the term ?consigliore? embodied for lawyers the notion of the completely trusted confidante and advisor. The term doesn?t show up much these days (See my post of Aug. 28, 2005: common desire to be seen as a...

Three views of challenges for inside lawyers who purport to ?manage? much more experienced outside counsel

Posted on March 27, 2011
This post scrapes the bottom of pessimism. Still, the mismatch that must happen between relatively uninformed lawyers and the savvy partners they presume to direct deserves comment. So did the Emperor?s clothes. We make three assumptions about inside lawyers who...

Online, a bizarre description of legal departments

Posted on March 27, 2011
On the website of eHow.com you can read a thumbnail description of several corporate staff functions, including legal. Very peculiar in several respects, it is pasted below. The bracketed numbers I inserted follow the odd words or phrases I comment...

Badgering clients if you ask them for written feedback on many matters completed

Posted on March 27, 2011
The legal department of the Financial Times recently introduced a practice that, taken at face value, I would question: ?the introduction of questionnaires for internal clients to fill out upon completion of a job.? (Corp. Counsel, April 2011 at 26)....

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

A checklist, with five priorities, to assess the effectiveness of pitches by law firms

Posted on March 25, 2011
Lisa Hart, the CEO of Acritas, shared research on what law departments find effective when law firms solicit business from them. These five attributes of pitches come from her presentation at the Georgetown University Law Center?s Center for the Study...

My upcoming panel at the InsideCounsel SuperConference, on metrics, benchmarking and management of legal departments

Posted on March 25, 2011
It is an honor to be invited to speak on a panel at InsideCounsel?s SuperConference. The panel?s topic, at 2:00-3:15 PM on May 23rd, will be metrics for managing law departments. I will be focused on benchmark metrics and client...

A cloud of choices when law departments consider cloud computing

Posted on March 25, 2011
An executive from Micro Strategies, Inc., in Met. Corp. Counsel, March 2011 at 33, points out some of the proliferating cloud choices: ?software as a service [SaaS], infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and desktop as a service.?...

Software and other technology used by large German law departments

Posted on March 25, 2011
An excellent chart in a recent benchmark report by Otto Henning & Co. based on large German companies provides insights into their law departments and level of use of nine technologies. Based on implemented systems only (Im Einsatz), all of...

Along with legal oversight, Anheuser-Busch InBev?s GC manages ?corporate affairs?

Posted on March 24, 2011
The top lawyer of Anheuser-Busch InBev, Sabine Chalmers, describes her 150-lawyer department in Practical Law, March 2011 at 80. In accordance with her dual title of Chief Legal & Corporate Affairs Officer of the $36.8 billion company, she and her...

Broad statement about the decisions made by a board of directors regarding law and compliance

Posted on March 24, 2011
?The board of directors decides the outlines of the staff, and structural organization of the legal and compliance function. Among other things, it decides whether the functions are joined or separate, whether they are handled centrally or not, to whom...

Total cost of ownership (TCO) as an important consideration for law departments when they invest in software

Posted on March 24, 2011
Total cost of ownership (TCO) should be a calculation done by all law departments before they select software. An executive of Datacert wrote that the definition of TCO ?includes all the upfront costs of procurement, including hardware and software, as...

The Möbius strip of hire the firm or hire the lawyer

Posted on March 24, 2011
One of the most profound conclusions I drew from Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton Univ. 2010) concerns the ageless debate: should a law department base retentions on the law firm or...

Two bells have to ring for significant change to happen between a law department and one of its firms

Posted on March 22, 2011
Change comes so hard between a law department and a law firm because they have to be in reasonable synch. Their respective champions of change need to be in roughly the same psychological space. Imagine two bell curves of willingness...

Free invoice review and management insights through an online ?game?

Posted on March 22, 2011
When a British newspaper obtained an enormous pile of receipts from politicians who might have filed bogus personal expenses, it put them online and invited the public to help spot abuses. A clever app let anyone look at a receipt...

Anything good, done by law departments to excess, withers

Posted on March 22, 2011
?Everything in moderation? echoes Greek philosophy but for law departments, even mothers? milk curdles if overdone. Consider several assuredly good things that turn bad if overdone. Law departments want excellent client satisfaction ratings, but if they rise too high something...

Come hear about benchmarks on my panel at Mitratech?s Interact 2011

Posted on March 22, 2011
I will be speaking at Interact, the conference organized each year by Mitratech for law departments. My panel will include Verona Dorch, AGC at Harsco Corporation, and Kim Rivera, GC of DaVita, Inc. Interact 2011: The Legal & Compliance Technology...

Revenue leakage from long-term contracts and what it suggests for law departments

Posted on March 21, 2011
Mark Harris, the CEO of Axiom, referred to a surprising finding from one of his company?s projects. Speaking at Georgetown University?s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession conference on March 9th, Harris referred to long-term contracts and their...

Another general counsel?s blog, Rich Baer?s Reliance on Counsel

Posted on March 21, 2011
As if Rich Baer, Qwest?s energetic and outspoken General Counsel, were not busy enough, he has seized the keyboard and joined the fray as a blogger. Please welcome Baer to blogdom and take a look at his Reliance on Counsel....

On the possible deleterious effects of knowledge management systems in law departments

Posted on March 21, 2011
A piece in the London Rev. of Books, March 3, 2011 at 11, wrestles with the claim of a recent book that over-use of the Internet robs us of intelligence, happiness, memory, and creativity. The reviewer disagrees regarding all but...

Smart lawyers aren?t by virtue of that creative lawyers, or even likely to be

Posted on March 21, 2011
?We know that creative genius is not the same thing as intelligence.? The quote comes from a book review in the London Rev. of Books, March 3, 2011 at 11. Like idiot savants know a huge amount about a small...

An alternative to department-wide, big and formal initiatives to give feedback to law firms

Posted on March 20, 2011
Consultants love to recommend comprehensive processes through which law departments tell their key law firms how the firms are doing. In an ideal world, such full-scale evaluations need training, software, databases, forms, number crunching, meetings, roll-out plans, post-mortems, interviews, and...

Three observations based on Cytec Industries and its legal services meetings and staff

Posted on March 20, 2011
Cytec Industries, a $3 billion company that produces engineered materials and specialty chemicals, has a legal team of ?16 lawyers, four paralegals, an export compliance manager and a government relations manager.? The entire team met for four days in Seattle...

Exhaustive contracts raise risks that broad-stroke agreements do not

Posted on March 20, 2011
Dan Ariely, writing in the Harv. Bus. Rev., March 2011 at 40, describes a thought-provoking contrast between what he terms ?complete contracts? and ?incomplete contracts.? He believes that ?business?s increasing dependence on (I would say, fetish for) absurdly detailed contracts...

The four most important attributes of an in-house lawyer, but unbalanced emphasis

Posted on March 20, 2011
A panelist at the Georgetown University?s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession conference on March 9th, remarked that a successful in-house lawyer needs four attributes. He listed knowledge (what the lawyer knows), skills (how the lawyer applies that...

Your choice of a law firm partly rests on how it embodies what you think about yourself?

Posted on March 20, 2011
An experienced marketing consultant, Dan Ross, said something worth pondering. He spoke about law firm brands at the conference two weeks past at Georgetown University?s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession. Ross said that customers often choose a...

Questions to ask to find out whether a practice group of a law firm will benefit your department

Posted on March 18, 2011
Practice groups in law firms make sense for both them and their clients. If you are a law department lawyer, however, and a partner from a law firm touts the firms ?[Fill-in-the-blank] Practice Group,? what should you find out about...

Brands of law firms ? doubtful thoughts after a Georgetown Law Center conference

Posted on March 18, 2011
Much was said about law firm brands at an excellent conference organized by Mitt Regan of Georgetown University?s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession. As summarized memorably by one speaker, a law firm?s brand is its ?promise to...

A view that companies deal more with law firm as a whole than with individual partners, and why

Posted on March 18, 2011
At the recent conference of Georgetown University?s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, Lisa Hart, the CEO of Acritas, shared research data on why law departments retain the law firms they do. In the course of her remarks...

Some benchmark metrics from French legal departments

Posted on March 18, 2011
A study last year of French legal departments, co-conducted by Profit & Law and Equiteam, obtained responses last year from 100 French general counsel. Some of the data reported resembles counterpart metrics in the United States. The cited data in...

Career path blockage exacerbated by adaptation and relative comparisons

Posted on March 18, 2011
Not only are promotions hard to come by in most law departments, because the pyramid of senior positions narrows rapidly, but two other elements of our sense of happiness toss in monkey-wrenches. One is that bliss doesn?t last: once you...

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...