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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

On this blog, the Million Word March ? a whole lotta writin? goin? on

Posted on July 30, 2009
Through its first 4,500 posts and 52 months, this blog piled up 903,932 words. The Word document in which I have combined those posts has margins of a half inch on all sides and totals 1,456 pages. Metrics nuts will...

Thank you, contributing (guest) authors on this blog! Are others interested in writing?

Posted on July 30, 2009
Ideas and issues about management of corporate legal functions thrive outside of what I encounter or think up. To help remedy my blind spots, I have welcomed to date and very much appreciated the insights of six co-authors: Brad Blickstein,...

Cluster analysis, a statistical tool that could benefit legal department managers

Posted on July 30, 2009
Academics who study the companies in an industry sometimes use a statistical technique called cluster analysis. ?Cluster analysis procedures generally use simple mathematical measures of distance or likeness to group individual firms on the basis of how similar or dissimilar...

Be fair, because, more than you, outside lawyers relive the hurdles they have jumped for you

Posted on July 29, 2009
"I like in-house lawyers to stick to their side of the deal. It is simply unfair when the client expects you and your team to jump to a teleconference on a Sunday, and then pays your bills several months later...

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A set of this blogger?s basic values and beliefs

Posted on July 29, 2009
Readers of a blog deserve an explicit statement of the value system of the blogger. For those readers who care and who pay attention, they can figure out what I believe. Even so, for the others and for myself, here...

The idea of quantifying shifts in responsibilities of general counsel, based on HR departments

Posted on July 29, 2009
Here is an interesting quote from BNA?s HR Department Benchmarks and Analysis 2008: ?HR departments are continuing a past decade trend of taking on more and more responsibilities. The percentage of HR departments taking on new responsibilities minus those giving...

Aspects of very large law departments

Posted on July 29, 2009
I have defined a large law departments as one that has more than 20 lawyers (See my post of June 27, 2006: large law departments defined; and Aug. 26, 2006: four largest law departments in France.). The topic is, shall...

From the HR world, a metric of legal spending per capita, but it has little usefulness

Posted on July 29, 2009
A report from BNA, HR Department Benchmarks and Analysis 2008, found the median per capita budgeted expenditure for HR departments was $1,082 per worker in 2006. The counterpart for legal would be total legal spending per corporate worker. I have...

Commercial arbitration can be shockingly costly and the fees are difficult to negotiate

Posted on July 29, 2009
A recent article lambastes commercial arbitrations on the basis of their sometime costs. Writing in the NYSBA J., Vol. 81, July/Aug. 2009 at 30, Ronald Offenkrantz describes the unregulated and often unfettered charges of arbitrators. Various organizations set some rules...

Introduction to organizational capital and legal departments

Posted on July 29, 2009
The following quote comes from Stephen Mayson, writing in Laura Empson, ed., Managing The Modern Law Firm: New Challenges New Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press 2007) at 152. ?Organizational capital is thus distinct from both human capital (which is embedded in...

Some differentiators between spend management systems

Posted on July 28, 2009
A guest author from Mitratech described some of the attributes that differentiate one package of spend management software from one another. The differences they cite include: 1. ?The level of billing detail they support (e.g. line items and sub-line items)...

Girdle-the-globe transactions as the counterpart of bet-the-company litigation ? blue moon events

Posted on July 28, 2009
The gigantic law firms that circled the globe always talk about how valuable they are in a huge transaction that requires lawyers to combine from multiple countries. Of course, there are huge deals that require legal advice in many countries,...

A good senior-manager move: insist on an agenda before agreeing to attend a meeting

Posted on July 28, 2009
A recent post invited readers to send me examples of good management. Dan Williams at T-Mobile obliged, and I thank him. He gave me permission to quote and cite him. ?I have an example that has stuck with me throughout...

New general counsel have about five days before assessments of them form and harden

Posted on July 26, 2009
A thoughtful article in MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Summer 2009 at 44, should unnerve newly appointed general counsel. Research shows that ?subordinates? expectations of the boss measured in the first five days of their relationship were strong predictors...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #110 ? additions to earlier posts and short takes

Posted on July 26, 2009
Exelon has an internal 1,750 billable-hour requirement. Corp. Counsel, June 2009 at 72, mentions this, which bolsters my point that the 1,850 hour ?standard? is too high. To put the difference in context, consider a five-lawyer department where inside spend...

Part XXXVI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on July 26, 2009
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of July 13, 2009: Part XXXV), each garnished with the number of its back references, for your perusal. 1. Benchmarks not otherwise covered (See my post of July 15, 2009: benchmarks with specific...

Another data-byte about spending on law firms in the United States

Posted on July 26, 2009
?America?s lawsuit system is already the world?s most expensive, costing more than $3,300 for every family of four,? announces Trial Lawyer Earmarks. The site adds that ?less than 50 cents of every dollar actually [goes] to the victims.? Roughly speaking,...

Two fixed-fee offerings: due diligence for M&A and insurance administrative hearings

Posted on July 25, 2009
Saul Ewing, a Philadelphia-based firm, launched its ?cost certainty commitment? in June 2009. Many law firms have agreed to work on various types of matters for a fixed fee, but I cite this particular one because of the publicity surrounding...

Two fixed-fee offerings: due diligence for M&A and insurance administrative hearings

Posted on July 24, 2009
Saul Ewing, a Philadelphia-based firm, launched its ?cost certainty commitment? in June 2009. Many law firms have agreed to work on various types of matters for a fixed fee, but I cite this particular one because of the publicity surrounding...

Six Sigma projects in various legal departments

Posted on July 24, 2009
Preparing for a presentation on Six Sigma as it can be applied by general counsel, I collected what I have written since my first metapost (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma with 18 references.). Surprisingly different applications...

IBM blurs the line between inside and outside counsel with its ?virtual firm? of retirees

Posted on July 24, 2009
Supporting the prolific IP department of IBM is a corps of nearly 100 retired IBM lawyers who practice as freelancers. This arrangement appears in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2009 at 77. That army of former in-housers made me wonder...

Some insights into who visits this blog

Posted on July 24, 2009
During three consecutive weekday mornings, I downloaded from SiteMeter the visitors' detail. Of the approximately 300 visits, 224 were from different sites (which means that about 25 percent of the sites had more than one visit during those three days)...

Online networks may be able to share information securely with a legal department?s network

Posted on July 24, 2009
General counsel may have some concerns about how the members of their legal groups can effectively use online social networks (See my post of Sept. 22, 2008: social networks such as Legal OnRamp or LinkedIn with 7 references.). One problem...

Big Blue?s big legal department: centralized, span of control, and matrix

Posted on July 24, 2009
At one time decentralized, IBM?s legal department recently centralized as it ??dis-embedded? its lawyers from its business units and created a single global team.? This description comes from Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2009 at 75, and reminds me of...

How to encourage your quiet lawyers to express their ideas in groups

Posted on July 24, 2009
Maybe because so many readers of this blog are silent, their circumstances and ideas mute to me, I appreciate ideas for how to let people safely express themselves (See my post of Feb. 18, 2009: ten suggestions for how to...

Good managers laugh ? here?s a cartoon applicable to this blog

Posted on July 23, 2009
To have a good sense of humor is part of being a good manager. To write blog posts without humor is a slog [I just wrote about going to war and one reason, along with freedom, God and rights was...

?When you go to battle, you hire the army not the soldier? ? not an apt metaphor for firm vs. partner

Posted on July 23, 2009
This memorable quote struck me, but struck me as misguided. The rhetoric, in the sense of the underlying assumptions and method of persuasion, invokes at least these six points. a) Hire the army connotes big matters. Most legal matters are...

Compliance groups in legal departments and decentralized through the company

Posted on July 23, 2009
From Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2009 at 66, we learn about the compliance function at The Hartford Financial Services Group. ?The law department?s compliance group has a staff of 35 (13 of them lawyers); another 250 compliance officers, only...

Spend time with economics, a saving grace for managers, and bank on the pay off! Any interest?

Posted on July 23, 2009
Many economic sub-disciplines have stimulating ideas to offer law department managers. I have gathered my posts on economics as a broad field, but thought I would highlight four recent sub-disciplines (See my post of Sept. 19, 2008: economic concepts with...

Always trying to improve this blog ?. and envisioning it five years from now

Posted on July 22, 2009
To improve this blog I have tried several new ventures since my last update (See my post of Feb. 20, 2009: a retrospective on the prior year, my fourth as a blogger; and Feb. 26, 2009: firsts for this blog.)....

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