In-House Counsel

An abundance of posts on decisions, and guidelines for how to decide on the ones you want

By Rees Morrison

You would have a hard time deciding among all the posts on this blog about decisions. A number of them step back from specific tools and techniques to broader aspects of in-house decision-making (See my posts of Aug. 24, 2006: multiple facets of in-house decisions; March 6, 2006: six generic forms of decision-making; Sept. 10, 2005: mental models; July 27, 2007: decision empowerment; June 6, 2006: mental maps and frameworks; Nov. 11, 2007: contexts for understanding decision-making; Aug. 20, 2006: neuro-economics; Jan. 25, 2008: reality of cause and effect; Jan. 16, 2008: cognitive lawyering and four references cited; April 19, 2006: depersonalized decisions; Oct. 19, 2005: aside from results, improve processes and match to results; and Feb. 10, 2007: four main strategic decisions a general counsel can take.).

Many tools are available to help lawyers come to conclusions (See my posts of Jan. 17, 2006 on decision analysis tools; June 18, 2007, Jan. 17, 2006 and Oct. 24, 2005: belief nets and decision trees; Nov. 28, 2005: mind mapping software; Feb. 23, 2006: argument diagrams; May 10, 2006: influence diagrams; Aug. 28, 2006: paired comparison analysis; Aug. 30, 2006: grid analysis of options and factors; Sept. 29, 2006: augmented-cognition software; April 17, 2006: decision tools; Nov. 6, 2006: ?after action? reviews; and Oct. 15, 2007: pre-mortems.).

Techniques help lawyers make better decisions (See my posts of Sept. 4, 2006: alternatives, surrogate arguers, and goals; Dec. 22, 2005: ?reference classes?; Feb. 20, 2007: sleep on it to make a good decision; Feb. 18, 2006: three thoughts on how to make better decisions; May 10, 2006: framing the problem; and Dec. 3, 2007: emotional intelligence and decisions.).

Some posts have considered obstacles to reaching effective decisions (See my posts of July 9, 2007: myth of crisp decision-making; Nov. 13, 2006: too many choices; Jan. 23, 2008: degrees of freedom; Feb. 1, 2006 and Jan. 21, 2008: peer pressure; Jan. 17, 2006: irrational optimism on big-bet decisions; undeserved caution on small ones; March 18, 2005: intuition; May 1, 2005: two limits of intuition; Sept. 4, 2005: lawyers over-rate their judgment and should use metrics more; March 23, 2006: sunk-cost fallacy; April 27, 2005: three key information failures; and Jan. 15, 2006: groupthink.).

Full post as published by Law Department Management on February 16, 2008 (boomark / email).