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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

Nice remarks about me by other bloggers (aka, this blogger has no shame)

Posted on June 01, 2009
Dan Hull, on his What About Clients, flattered me today: ?At his well-regarded Law Department Management, Rees Morrison, by far one of the smarter, sager and more experienced lawyer-consultants out there, just asked "Does a General Counsel Make All That...

Online networks for in-house lawyers get most of their management comments from non-practitioners

Posted on June 01, 2009
Having hosted for more than a year discussion groups on LinkedIn about law department management and on Legal OnRamp about legal department operations, I can attest that very few in-house attorneys either start topics or comment on topics. Most of...

?Goodbye, accrual world? ? sorry, but US legal departments have to report incurred but unpaid legal fees

Posted on June 01, 2009
Some metrics are available that tell us how frequently legal departments collect accrual data from their law firms. Not an accountant, my working definition of accruals are legal costs incurred but not paid by a fiscal-period cutoff date (See my...

Does a general counsel make all that much difference?

Posted on May 29, 2009
The title of an article in the Atlantic, Vol. 303, June 2009 at 54, provocatively asks, ?Do CEO?s matter?? A groundbreaking study published 47 years ago found that ?Industry effects,? such as the amount of available capital and the industry?s...

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UTC references and its global spread plus governance software

Posted on May 29, 2009
Several posts here have mentioned United Technologies? legal department (See my post of Dec. 8, 2005: lessons learned from alternative billing; Dec. 19, 2005: difficulty proving savings from discounts; Jan. 6, 2006: captive offshore facility; and Aug...

Two more ways to increase energy efficiency in a legal department, and startling facts

Posted on May 29, 2009
Accustomed behaviors waste electricity; changed behaviors can save it. For three examples of what is easy to change, I commend Joe Howie?s article in Legal Tech. News, May 2009 at 40. The first tool is the Smart Strip Power Strip,...

A tip of the hat to Serengeti for its contributions to management information

Posted on May 29, 2009
I relish surveys and analyzing their methodology and findings (See my post of March 2, 2008: surveys of law departments with 72 references.). The most prolific survey for law department management data from this blogger?s perspective is certainly that of...

Bill reductions need to be legitimate for a general counsel to claim savings

Posted on May 29, 2009
From the 2008 ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, published in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, May 2009 at 9, comes this finding: ?[C]ounsel most frequently reduce bills for what they perceive as time not well spent for the following reasons...

?Direct reports?: those whose primary evaluator is the general counsel

Posted on May 29, 2009
No posts have defined this term but some posts have commented generally on those who report to the chief legal officer through no intermediate person (See my post of June 7, 2006: number of reports to general counsel; Dec. 9,...

Try a double blind evaluation of law firm proposals

Posted on May 29, 2009
For your next competitive bid, ask the firms to submit two proposals. The second one should be blinded, the name of the firm and all information identifying the firm being concealed. I hear you muttering, ?You are crazy, Rees!? But...

Four ways to look at concentration regarding a department?s use of law firms

Posted on May 29, 2009
The percentage of a department?s fees paid to its top law firms is one common way to describe law firm concentration. For example, 75 percent of a department?s fees went to 10 percent of its firms (See my post of...

To manage a legal department is to wrestle with ?wicked problems?

Posted on May 28, 2009
The Rotman Mag., Winter 2009 is devoted to ?wicked problems.? One article (at 19) sets out six characteristics of wicked problems, all of which together suggest that for managers of sizeable internal legal functions wicked problems abound. ?You don't understand...

Auctions: pick the best bidder but for one dollar more than the second best bid

Posted on May 28, 2009
Wired, June 2009 at 110, describes Google?s auction method, one which could apply to legal departments when they put work out to bid for a fixed fee. The winner of a competitive bid would be selected to do the work...

The h-index and a potential application to legal departments? retention of law firms

Posted on May 28, 2009
A physicist, Jorge Hirsch, devised a formula to determine the quality of scientific papers published by a scientist. ?The h-index is the number n of a researcher?s papers that have been cited by other papers at least n times. High...

?Don?t benchmark competitors? (?)

Posted on May 24, 2009
That is the headline of one of the six ?don?ts? of working-capital management, as laid out in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2009 at 67. Working capital is not the same as legal spending and staffing, I agree,...

Twelve problems with broad, commercial benchmark surveys of law department metrics

Posted on May 24, 2009
From the standpoint of a typical general counsel, the benchmark surveys you can buy leave several scars and irritations. 1. Sometimes subsidiaries submit responses, which skews the results. 2. Many questions on the survey may not matter to you. 3....

Challenges faced by moderators of panels

Posted on May 24, 2009
A previous post offers 13 techniques to improve your performance if you moderate a panel (See my post of May 22, 2009: moderator methodology.). As I kept thinking about the topic, images popped into my head of moderator headaches. So,...

Term sheets for clients should be a key part of contracting processes

Posted on May 24, 2009
One of the panels at the SuperConference stressed the importance of term sheets for clients. Term sheets help clients think through what they ought to nail down regarding a transaction. Their spadework saves lawyers? time and saves the lawyers from...

The claimed value to general counsel of predictable legal expenses on matters

Posted on May 24, 2009
For years people have told me that general counsel strongly value predictability of legal fees, even if that means higher fees. I have doubted that statement. I doubt it because the total amount spent during a year on outside firms...

Firms call them beauty contests, law department managers call them interviews

Posted on May 24, 2009
Among the many ways managers decide which firm or lawyer to retain, the in-person interview is probably the most effective. As with interviews of prospective hires, many techniques help those managers do a better job (See my post of Nov....

A framework for models of law department operations

Posted on May 24, 2009
A model simplifies reality so that the analyst can grapple with the fundamentals of a system (See my post of July 14, 2006: narratives, theories and models; and May 21, 2009 #3: three kinds of formal models.). Some primitive verbal...

Some reasons why legal groups have to adhere to corporate IT standards ? from long ago

Posted on May 22, 2009
?One of the considerations involved in managing the automation of a corporate law department is the obligation to follow corporate standards. This becomes important in order to allow for support staff mobility [RWM: so that IT support and administrative staff...

13 ground rules for moderators of effective panels at retreats

Posted on May 22, 2009
Some legal departments invite to their retreats two or three clients or two or three law firm partners to take part on a panel discussion. Usually, someone moderates the panel. These suggestions for those moderators come from my experience on...

Cross-pollination with two specialized blogs ? procurement/sourcing and legal technology

Posted on May 22, 2009
I am honored to have become a guest author on Jason Busch?s Spend Matters, a leading blog in the area of strategic sourcing, purchasing and procurement. My forays into those who buy goods and services for companies will also appear...

Part XXXII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on May 22, 2009
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of May 8, 2009: Part XXXI.), each adorned with the number of back references. 1. Chargeable hours inside (See my post of May 21, 2009: internal chargeable hours with 12 references.). 2. Contingency...

A striking recommendation regarding who interviews attorneys for a position in the department

Posted on May 22, 2009
Not that much hiring is going on, but for the straggling few departments that have an opportunity to add someone, consider this recommendation about interviews: ?It?s more important to choose the right assessors than to focus on the assessment technique...

A possible benchmark metric: total lawyer hours worked per billion of revenue

Posted on May 22, 2009
We talk of inside lawyers per billion of revenue but it would be more insightful to convert that metric to lawyer hours worked and to add outside counsel hours, thus producing total lawyer hours per billion. (See my post of...

To boost knowledge transfer, ask lawyers to tell stories, and give cash to the good ones

Posted on May 21, 2009
Rather than ask lawyers and paralegals to crank out deadly-dull postmortems, suggest that they write ?human stories that people can connect with.? This idea comes from the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2009 at 23 and the experience of...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #104 ? additions to earlier posts and short takes

Posted on May 21, 2009
100 online resources on offshoring. A Canadian collaborative law blog, Slaw touches on LPO often, especially in this article: ?LPO Provides a Positive Boost for Economy in Recession.? http://www.slaw.ca/about-slaw/ This blog, not listed by me previously (See my post of...

Wolfram|Alpha, a harbringer for benchmarks, computes answers to questions from databases

Posted on May 21, 2009
A fascinating article in the NY Times, May 11, 2009 at B7, describes an online service that computes the answers to questions by drawing on collections of data the company has amassed. Some 100 employees in Wolfram Research have gathered,...

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