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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

Noting posts on India other than the flood about offshoring

Posted on October 25, 2010
Virtually everything on this blog that refers to India falls under the topic of offshoring. Aside from that 800-pound gorilla there are, in fact, some tiny chimps of posts related to India. A few refer to the number of Indian...

Litigation as tremors around the massive competitive struggles

Posted on October 25, 2010
Like the Pacific?s Rim of Fire, litigation shakes where the tectonic plates of business shift or collide. Providing two examples, the Economist, Oct. 23, 2010 at 75, describes the titanic legal struggles between the giants of technology over the next...

Management time and surprising total income for heads of IP groups (circa 2004)

Posted on October 25, 2010
Two points struck me from data in the American Intellectual Property Law Association?s (AIPLA) Rep. of the Ec. Survey 2005 at I-73. The page shows data for 140 chief IP lawyers in corporations. One chart shows the percentage of time...

Will general counsel make use of the impending rankings of law firms by U.S. News & World Report?

Posted on October 25, 2010
Not likely, would be my answer. If the methodology resembles what the magazine controversially publishes about law school rankings, general counsel won?t learn much that they don?t already know. The name brand firms will strut through the top 25, the...

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Gather ye electronic rosebuds while ye may, from law firms

Posted on October 25, 2010
Law departments seem reluctant to insist that their law firms deliver all work product electronically. The requirement may be a common request in outside counsel guidelines but there is little enthusiasm for enforcement. Maybe the ugly truth is that in-house...

Data on the percentage of law firm fees that are billed other than on an hourly basis and the two-year trend

Posted on October 22, 2010
LexisNexis CounselLink, an e-billing and matter management provider, found that approximately 16 percent of ?law firm fees billed to clients in the first six months of 2010 were invoiced according to rules of AFAs? (alternative fee arrangements). The article that...

Consider this response if a law firm recommends costly remedial steps (that they would do)

Posted on October 22, 2010
You have retained a law firm to investigate possible wrong-doing in your company. The firm does its work, submits its report and, not surprisingly, recommends that you retain them further to take care of some of the (costly) recommendations. For...

Relative efficacy of seven ways of learning

Posted on October 22, 2010
In talent mgt, Oct. 2010 at Supp. 7, a pyramid from National Training Laboratories depicts the relative effectiveness of seven ways to learn. The least effective, at the top of the pyramid, is a lecture (given a percentage of 5%...

Scattered clues to the number of law departments in the US from state-level data

Posted on October 22, 2010
A researcher wrote in 1996 that "Of the 40,000 corporations in Massachusetts with 15 or more employees, less than 1,000 (about 2%) have in-house counsel" (See my post of May 23, 2007 #1: data from Ron Fox.). Working with my...

Blind bids for how much your firm, as plaintiff?s counsel, will recover for you before dipping in

Posted on October 21, 2010
If your law department has a juicy lawsuit to be filed against a deep pocket, give some thought to a method a judge used to choose the lead counsel in a 2000 price-fixing class action. As described in Fortune, Nov....

Million-dollar ?signing bonus? just for the privilege of retaining a law firm!

Posted on October 21, 2010
An adulatory profile of David Boies mentions that his firm ?imitates investment banks by charging flat fees.? That puts them at the cutting edge of law firms since Boies Schiller takes on some major cases. It was the next line...

Proclaimed drop in legal spend: good management or bad economy?

Posted on October 21, 2010
The press release by Thomson?s Hildebrandt BakerRobbins, regarding the first benchmark survey by the merged consulting groups, makes much of the year-over-year decline in median total legal spending. The consulting firm touted management prowess on the part of law departments...

Benchmark boom this year reflected in several studies

Posted on October 20, 2010
The global benchmark survey of General Counsel Metrics, LLC (well, this blogger, really) burst upon the scene this year and has amassed more than 700 participants. The law department benchmark survey conducted by ALM increased its participation rate from about...

If you fear the retirement of very knowledgeable senior lawyers, consider software to siphon off some of their expertise

Posted on October 20, 2010
The imminent departure, by retirement or illness, of a seasoned lawyer worries many general counsel. If they leave, so does their knowledge of the law, the realpolitik of practice, and the company. One way to lessen the loss might be...

Reduce the cost and environmental impact of office printers

Posted on October 20, 2010
Right after reading about the vast number of trees (pages of paper) we consume in offices (See my post of Oct. 7, 2010: 8,333 pages per tree.), I read with fascination about some innovative techniques to preserve ink and save...

Don?t ask for preliminary views on a decision at the start of a meeting

Posted on October 20, 2010
At the start of many meetings meant to reach a decision, researchers have found, the attendees begin by disclosing their pre-meeting inclinations. That common practice ? a straw vote, so to speak ? has bad consequences. According to findings summarized...

Using in-house lawyers per employee, another speculation on the number of US legal departments

Posted on October 20, 2010
?There are 30,000 companies in the United States that have at least 100 employees,? it says in Intellectual Prop., Fall 2010 at 48. That might be another clue as to how many law departments exist in the country, although presumably...

A recommendation to create a separate corporate licensing team with its own legal staff

Posted on October 18, 2010
A supplement to the ACC Docket, by Sutherland Asbill & Brennan, Summer 2010 at 6, discusses approvingly the establishment by companies that license their patents to others (?outlicensing companies?) of a separate corporate licensing team. The team should operate on...

An exhortation in an article to create a Chief Legal Diversity Officer

Posted on October 18, 2010
The Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) Docket, July/Aug. 2010, at 32, recommends an action general counsel should take to elevate the importance of diverse attorneys representing the company. ?They should consider establishing a position of chief legal diversity officer or...

Laws and regulations in Europe that block general counsel who want market competition for external counsel

Posted on October 18, 2010
A piece in the Economist, Oct. 9, 2010 at 24, links lack of productivity growth in European countries partly to their restrictions on professional services. It notes that ?many European countries are rife with anti-competitive rules. Architects and lawyers? fees...

The warping psychology of power and some cautions for general counsel

Posted on October 18, 2010
General counsel have power. They can hire and fire, pay and promote. They can mentor and support or they can neglect and derail. There lies power. An ad for a DVD from the Stanford Graduate School of Business gives a...

An old-fashioned, client-disrespecting view by a well-known law firm of invoice information

Posted on October 14, 2010
A quote in the IBA Daily News, Oct. 5, 2010 at 1, stunned me. Speaking on a panel at the International Bar Association Vancouver Conference, a partner from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett openly shared a set of beliefs that should...

Still trying to get a handle on the number of legal departments around the world

Posted on October 14, 2010
Another piece of the puzzle came my way, courtesy of Iberian Lawyer, July/Aug. 2010 at 23. Ramon Mullerat, the former President of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of the European Union (CCBE), writes that ?there are an estimated...

Law departments can learn typical charges for IP law services as detailed in AIPLA Report

Posted on October 14, 2010
Little uncertainty surrounds the typical costs of common forms of US patent and trademark services. For 18 US utility patent services, 9 trademark services, and 9 other kinds of IP services, a detailed report lays out the median charges by...

Productivity regarding patent applications prepared and filed per year in-house

Posted on October 14, 2010
According to the American Intellectual Property Law Association?s Rep. of the Ec. Survey 2005, at 17, corporate IP department attorneys (not including heads of departments) spent one-third of their time on IP prosecution work directly (See my post of Sept...

Sarbanes-Oxley Section 307/205 ? law departments neglect notification of compliance obligation

Posted on October 14, 2010
Guest blogger Jeff Kaplan writes that ?SEC Rules of Part 205 ? based on Section 307 of Sarbanes-Oxley ? requires attorneys practicing before the SEC to take certain actions if faced with evidence of a securities law violation. When first...

Four contenders for the role of packaging legal knowledge for the benefit of in-house counsel

Posted on October 13, 2010
New types of entrants in the legal market foreshadow the organization and delivery of legal guidance outside the walls of law firms. In-house lawyers who locate and apply the alternative, available information will to that degree bypass law firms. This...

Lawyers per paralegal as a staffing metric discussed in my online column

Posted on October 13, 2010
As a contribution to the ongoing discussion about the scope of what paralegals can do in law departments and therefore the optimal ratios of lawyers to paralegals, I assembled some data from my global benchmarking survey. My most recent online...

Some perceptions of drawbacks to reliance on law-firm discovery centers

Posted on October 13, 2010
I heard a week or so ago of some dissatisfaction with the services offered by law firms that offer themselves as centers of excellence for discovery work. True, they have banks of computers; yes they know software packages; of course...

All-you-can-eat retainers to resolve specialized questions of law

Posted on October 12, 2010
If a favored law firm possesses specialized depth of knowledge, a department might negotiate a retainer agreement. Under such an agreement, some or all the department?s lawyers can call the firm with questions in a defined area. For example, FCPA...

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