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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

Has Samsung elevated the role of Asian general counsel?

Posted on June 13, 2009
?The role of in-house lawyers has generally been less pronounced in large Asian corporations than their American and European counterparts. Relatively few companies have full fledged General Counsel, with the top legal role frequently filled by a vice president or...

Eleven reasons why in-house lawyers value online legal professional networks

Posted on June 13, 2009
A survey conducted a year ago on behalf of LexisNexis, hosts of Connected, gathered responses from more than 449 in-house attorneys (See my post of Oct. 12, 2008: background details on the poll; and June 9, 2009: some questions about...

More collective actions by law departments

Posted on June 10, 2009
Joint efforts by a number of legal departments for their collective good have shown up frequently on this blog. As early as four years ago I collected several instances (See my post of Oct. 14, 2005: collective activities by law...

Bias against consultants, but what are partners in law firms except specialized consultants?

Posted on June 10, 2009
Many people consult to legal departments; partners at law firms consult to legal departments. Why such different attitudes by general counsel toward the two roles? A consultant, experienced with other legal departments and their management efforts, objective in assessments, creative...

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If fixed-fee deals were more public, general counsel could put a value on their departments

Posted on June 10, 2009
To the degree that law departments and law firms were to publicize their fixed fees for handling broad ranges of matters, such as ?$500,000 a year for all employment-related adversarial relations,? in-house counsel will be better able to quantify their...

Ovations for the ?Three Tenors? of current law-department stardom

Posted on June 09, 2009
Who are the Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo currently singing the leading roles as law department managers and innovators? Tom Sager of DuPont, Mark Chandler of Cisco, and Jeff Carr of FMC Technologies are center stage and the tenor of their...

An inquiry into data about participation of lawyers on online social networks

Posted on June 09, 2009
?[B]ased on our research, we know 60 percent of legal professionals already use online social networks regularly,? according to an article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 72. I was dubious so I wrote one of the...

National Grid?s use of SharePoint and other legal software

Posted on June 09, 2009
After my recent post (See my post of June 1, 2009: SharePoint as an option for legal departments.), Adam Davidson of National Grid, a UK company, wrote me. ?The in-house team I work in has been using SharePoint for document...

Sonnets from the Portuguese, or, more prosaically, about this blog and blogster in Portuguese

Posted on June 09, 2009
For all my readers in Brazil and Portugal, a little background: Um consultor bem informado para advogados escreve no blog LawDepartmentManagementBlog.com. H� mais de 4,000 arquivos (� partir do primeiro de Fevereiro, 2009) divididos entre 13 categorias...

Further thoughts on shared evaluations of law firms

Posted on June 09, 2009
?If just a handful of legal departments within the Fortune 500 were to agree to use a publicly available law-firm evaluation system, it would be a tremendous resource that would benefit everyone who hires outside counsel.? Jeff Carr, the hyperactive....

The abundant management initiatives of Jeff Carr, general counsel of FMC Technologies

Posted on June 07, 2009
Jeff Carr?s eight-lawyer department at $4.6 billion FMC Technologies punches far above its weight when it comes to innovative and publicized management efforts. Consistently he not only comes up with progressive ideas but also publicize them (See my post of...

August DuPont, as in proud DuPont, for its management initiatives

Posted on June 07, 2009
DuPont ? big, big legal budget, and big on operational improvements, is the company most written about on this blog. Averaging a bit more than a half dozen posts each year, the ideas, innovation, and ink of Tom Sager?s team...

The ten posts on this blog that have attracted the most views from feeds ? hard to figure

Posted on June 07, 2009
These ten posts got the most views and clicks (the numbers in parenthesis) since January 16, 2007, when I first signed up for FeedBurner. What seems odd is that all of the posts are from March through May of this...

Part XXXIII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on June 07, 2009
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of May 22, 2009: Part XXXII), each draped with the number of its back references. 1. Audits of legal departments (See my post of June 4, 2009: internal audits of law departments with...

Three useful comments regarding translation services

Posted on June 05, 2009
An article in Asian Counsel, Vol. 17, May 2009 at 23, by TranslateMedia?s Rupert Evans offers good advice regarding transation services. Rupert@translatemedia.com Look to see whether a translation agency is a member of the ATA (the American Translators Association) or...

Delay, the deepest frustration of benchmark projects

Posted on June 05, 2009
The challenge when a legal group commissions a custom benchmarking project is not creating the questions, finding comparable law departments, confirming the accuracy of the metrics, or analyzing the results. Rather, it is the weeks and weeks needed to persuade...

Budgets of chief legal offices and currency fluctuations

Posted on June 05, 2009
If the outside counsel budget is your responsibility, currency fluctuations can hurt or help you. If your budget is denominated in dollars, for example, when the greenback falls, your fees paid to Euro-based firms climb. At least US firms negate...

A patent portal and list of 20 patent search tools

Posted on June 04, 2009
I had not realized that so many search tools are available for those who want to find patents. If you want to find out more about them, Intellogist can make your research and decision process easier. Intellogist is a free...

Is the incidence of internal audits of legal departments rising?

Posted on June 04, 2009
?It?s a fact of life that more law departments are being subjected to audits by internal auditing functions, particularly reviews of law department spending and budgets.? This assertion, proclaimed with no quantitative support, comes from an excellent article on e-billing...

Esteem your teams with temerity as they teem with tremendous challenges (four of them)

Posted on June 04, 2009
Large size limits team effectiveness. An article previously discussed (See my post of May 29, 2009: do general counsel matter.) cites research that ?performance problems increase exponentially as team size increases.? The ideal team consists of approximately six people...

Two questions about secondments ? familiarity and conflicts

Posted on June 04, 2009
From a panel I moderated at the SuperConference, two thoughtful questions arose. How important is it that the law department have worked extensively with the law firm that provides a seconded lawyer? The consensus view of the panelists was that...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #105 ? additions to earlier posts and short takes

Posted on June 04, 2009
Regional patent applications. ?With 28,000 cases under management, Canon Europe's patent department files approximately 200 applications on behalf of Canon Inc every year, in addition to European filings from other group company offices around the world...

Legal departments and ?expense audits?

Posted on June 04, 2009
A brief comment in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 18, set me to thinking about audits of disbursements. A long article on e-billing cites Idearc (formerly Verizon Information Services) for its adoption of an online system for...

Four essential concerns of project managers

Posted on June 04, 2009
The blog Legal Project Management, by the Managing Director (Asia) at Global Colleague, cites an article by Sanjay Bandhari, head of e-discovery at Ernst & Young. Bandhari?s article discusses the benefits of applying project management skills to electronic discovery...

Outhouse GCs and a blog for companies that have not yet hired an in-house lawyer

Posted on June 04, 2009
At different sizes and times, founders and executives of companies conclude that they need an employee lawyer. Before that point, they hire law firms as they see fit, sometimes relying on one particular firm as their outside general counsel. Daniel...

Three points beyond the overview post on SharePoint

Posted on June 03, 2009
SharePoint must have a huge following, since the post I wrote a few days back attracted many readers (See my post of June 1, 2009: SharePoint as an option for legal departments.). Yet the post was quite generic. What is...

Information collected by registered agents could go directly to your matter management system

Posted on June 01, 2009
A long article in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 47, mentions (at 50) that matter management systems can absorb data electronically from service-of-process (SOP) agents. Registered agents, as they are also called, enter information about complaints, subpoenas...

Microsoft SharePoint as an option for legal departments

Posted on June 01, 2009
Law departments ought to consider Microsoft?s SharePoint for some of their automation needs, according to an article by a consulting firm in ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 18. The article describes it as having the potential to serve...

Law firms ?need to grasp that they sell ideas, not time?

Posted on June 01, 2009
Advertising agencies are being pushed to adopt value billing instead of hourly billing, according to The Economist, May 16, 2009 at 72. Coca-Cola has started a ?value-based? compensation system for its advertisers. Under the new system, Coke guarantees to cover...

Reverse brainstorming stimulates creativity

Posted on June 01, 2009
One problem with brainstorming is that it forces the process of creating new ideas. ?Here we are, it?s 9:30 AM, so get wild!? Few minds do breakthrough somersaults on demand (See my post of Feb. 20, 2007: sleep on it...

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