In-House Counsel

Most important concepts for general counsel as managers: the next ten

By Rees Morrison

The ten most important management concepts chief legal officers should understand were unveiled earlier (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: ten most important concepts: client, risk, quality, productivity, talent and then structure, information flow, decisions, value and objectivity). Here, in order of priority, are the next ten on the important-management-concepts list.

1. Delegation (See my post of Aug. 28, 2008: delegation within a law department with 14 references.).

2. Knowledge management This blog has an entire category for posts related to storing and distributing explicit knowledge and work product (See my post of Aug. 28, 2008: work product with 10 references.).

3. Processes (See my post of July 13, 2008: processes pulled together with 26 references.).

4. Collaboration (teamwork) (See my post of Aug. 27, 2005: the Red Cross?s client-law department collaboration; June 16, 2007: Northwestern and its explicit encouragement of collaboration; April 2, 2006 on forms of collaboration; May 14, 2006: collaboration vs. communication; Jan. 4, 2006: Halliburton?s approach to teamwork; Sept. 10, 2005: communities of interest; Feb. 12, 2006: proximity and sharing of knowledge; July 18, 2006: women are more collaborative than men; Dec. 9, 2005: we work better with those we like; Dec. 18, 2006: a way to measure joint effort; April 13, 2007 #3: neuroscience and collaboration; Nov. 8, 2005: HR and teamwork; March 26, 2008: Cisco and knowledge exchange to facilitate collaboration; June 6, 2008: Ten Cs of employee engagement; Jan. 25, 2009: too much collaboration slows decisions; and Feb. 1, 2009: project teams of law departments with 39 references and 4 metaposts.).

5. Technology (software) (See my post of Feb. 9, 2008: law-department applications with 59 references.).

6. Empowerment (See my post of April 16, 2006: empowered clients; May 3, 2006: lawyers empowered at Computer Associates; and July 27, 2007: decision empowerment;.)

7. Professional development (CLE) (See my post of May 25, 2008: CLE with 30 references; and Sept. 1, 2008: learning methods with 12 references.). http://www.lawdepartmentmanagementblog.com/law_department_management/2008/09/behavior-change.html

8. Priorities (See my post of June 26, 2008: priorities with 6 references.).

9. Benchmarks Another category on this blog covers metrics and benchmarks (See my post of Jan. 12, 2009: benchmarks over time with 8 references; and May 29, 2008: benchmarks other than individual metrics with 28 references.).

10. Recognition and rewards (See my post of June 30, 2007: bonuses with 8 references.).

Full post as published by Law Department Management on April 05, 2009 (boomark / email).