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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

The lay of the land: seven ?maps? for managers of corporate legal departments

Posted on May 13, 2009
For those who manage corporate attorneys, the term ?map? has many applications (See my post of Jan. 1, 2008: the cartography of legal department operations; May 6, 2008: website for graphical explorations, including tree maps; and March 1, 2009: cartograms...

A historian?s skills applied to legal department management

Posted on May 13, 2009
Professional historians would bring to bear a number of concepts to their view of legal departments. Below are several that they would apply. Causality ? does circumstance A lead to circumstance B (See my post of Jan. 25, 2008: causality...

No benefit from contingency arrangement if your company has the cash to pay the firm

Posted on May 12, 2009
Marschall Smith, the General Counsel of 3M, explained his company?s policy about plaintiff?s contingency fees. Speaking at the SuperConference, Smith said, ?We don?t favor contingency arrangements if we are the plaintiff because 3M has the cash to pay the firm...

A way to bring evaluations of lawyers into line with each other

Posted on May 12, 2009
At a panel during the Ninth Annual SuperConference, a lawyer from Exelon told the audience how that large law department makes sure managers each use a similar approach and grading style. The twenty managers of lawyers, those who evaluate lawyers...

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How Ford Motor Credit laid off lawyers provides some lessons for others

Posted on May 12, 2009
A senior attorney with Ford Motor Credit spoke on a panel at the SuperConference. She laid out several aspects of the reduction in force recently endured by her law department. Muzette Hill Stallings said that management told the department about...

A strengthened performance management system at H-P

Posted on May 12, 2009
A former Morgan, Lewis & Bockius partner, Michael Holston, now the General Counsel of Hewlett-Packard, says he has had one goal for HP's legal department: to make it the "best legal and government affairs department in the world." Zusha Elinson...

Specialist lawyers see their legal domain in everything; the sniglet ?experteyes?

Posted on May 10, 2009
We need a sniglet (a made up word for a common situation) for the idea that specialist lawyers can usually find one of their arcane issues tucked into any set of facts. A knowledgeable tax lawyer can find subtle tax...

Audits of the legal condition in a country

Posted on May 10, 2009
During interviews in a consulting project, I heard about ?legal audits? conducted at a US company that brings in roughly 50 percent of its revenue from overseas, Every year or two a team of senior lawyers visits a country where...

When the journalist calls, mix and match buzz words to embellish your legal department

Posted on May 10, 2009
Inspired by Elliott Hurwitt in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2009 at 102, who spoofed PR releases by technology vendors, here is my similar approach for general counsel who want to praise their group. When words fail you, don?t fail...

Search not just your department?s knowledge base but also your key law

Posted on May 10, 2009
HSBC Holdings, the huge, global bank, has something like 650 in-house lawyers (See my post of March 17, 2006: HSBC?s decentralized reporting.). In addition to its other management initiatives chronicled on this blog (See my post of April 13, 2008:...

Neck and neck in terms of law department users among the leading e-billing systems

Posted on May 08, 2009
Three disparate pieces of information came together for me and point to a highly competitive, and relatively balanced, market for high-end e-billing/matter management systems. Three companies, in alphabetical order below, dominate this market and I comment on the number of...

An idea for a retreat that builds knowledge of how clients see the world

Posted on May 08, 2009
You may want to try this to encourage your lawyers to learn more about the business they support (See my post of May 7, 2009: learn as much as you can about your company?s business.). At a retreat, Karen Wishart,...

Four structural changes resonant with the importance of in-house business acumen

Posted on May 08, 2009
Attendees at a session of the SuperConference learned what inside lawyers need to know about the business of the company they support. For all but a few specialist lawyers, deep knowledge of how the business makes money, how accountants and...

Part XXXI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on May 08, 2009
It is with the greatest honor and humility that I hereby present for your delectation the most current embedded metaposts (See my post of April 27, 2009: Part XXX.), each of which bijou unveils the number of references cited within....

Respect your clients ? don?t patronize them ? and expect the same from your law firm partners

Posted on May 07, 2009
You build strong trust and respect with your clients if you never make them feel dumb. They may do something or ask something that seems so basic to you, but never make them feel silly. That alienates them; it patronizes...

Repeat after me: ?Know how your business and industry operates, in detail!?

Posted on May 07, 2009
A session at the most recent SuperConference concerned what inside lawyers need to know about the business of the company they support. Marti Wronski, General Counsel of the Milwaukee Brewers, made the interesting point that ambitious lawyers shouldn?t ?wish for...

The useful information you gain about your lawsuit if you negotiate an alternative fee arrangement

Posted on May 06, 2009
The terms that a law firm agrees to, such as to accept a 25 percent holdback in return for 10 percent of the difference between a $10 million settlement and a $50 million settlement, tells you what the firm thinks...

Four observations regarding management of outside counsel costs

Posted on May 06, 2009
Four points occurred to me as I listened to Karen Klein, General Counsel, Kayak.com, during the recent Ninth Annual SuperConference www.insidecounsel.com/superconference. The first point was her observation that law firms should measure revenue on a per-employee basis, as does her...

What is the difference between a department?s ?budget? and its ?forecasts??

Posted on May 06, 2009
OK, not the most momentous topic, but as I listened to Karen Klein, General Counsel, Kayak.com at the recent Ninth Annual SuperConference, she kept referring to the two terms, and showed them repeatedly on her slides. A budget estimates what...

The accumulation of spend data in legal departments will, over time, reduce costs

Posted on May 06, 2009
One long-term trend may escape notice: legal departments are steadily stocking more and better data about what it costs outside counsel to handle matters. As David Grumbine, Senior Counsel, Dispute Resolution Group, of Whirlpool Corporation, put it on a panel...

Does the monthly rate of expenditures on cases rise faster the longer the case lasts?

Posted on May 06, 2009
At the Ninth Annual SuperConference www.insidecounsel.com/superconference, David Grumbine, Senior Counsel, Dispute Resolution Group, of Whirlpool Corporation spoke about best practices for working with outside counsel. He stated: ?Work expands the longer a case is open and the more money it...

Another application caught in the web of 2.0: online prediction markets for law departments

Posted on May 06, 2009
Another Web 2.0 application that might be tried by an internal legal team can be added to the nine already identified (See my post of Feb. 1, 2009: 9 applications; and March 16, 2008: Web 2.0 applications.). The tenth is...

When the meter is ticking, inside counsel don?t speak to their outside counsel as readily

Posted on May 06, 2009
At the Ninth Annual SuperConference, David Grumbine, Senior Counsel, Dispute Resolution Group, of Whirlpool Corporation spoke. ?A world without billable hours is our mantra,? Grumbine announced, so he and his 30-person defense team pursue fixed fees whenever they can (See...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #100 ? a centennial of additions to earlier posts and short takes

Posted on May 04, 2009
The fate of a general counsel and his blog. With the purchase of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, will General Counsel Michael Dillon?s blog fall silent (See my post of Dec. 16, 2008: 13 corporate law department blogs.)? Non-compete restrictions on...

?Four basic conditions are necessary before employees will change their behavior?

Posted on May 04, 2009
If you are a general counsel and want your lawyers to change some accustomed practice, such as the engrained choice of hourly billing or the disinclination to use a matter management system, what techniques serve you best? From the McKinsey...

The long and winding road: an in-house lawyer?s career path

Posted on May 04, 2009
The thrust of several posts is that in-house career path is an oxymoron (See my post of March 28, 2006: ostensible reasons not to go in-house; June 24, 2007: the intractable problem of career paths; April 12, 2006: among least...

A long-term relationship between client and law firm ? more than 100 years

Posted on May 04, 2009
Recently, when Chalco boosted its stake in the Rio Tinto Group, Rio Tinto turned to that Australian firm of Allens Arthur Robinson in the firm?s capacity as legal advisors. As reported in Asian Legal Bus., Vol. 7, April 2009 at...

The $5 million threshold, ?at which level general counsel start wanting software to assist?

Posted on May 04, 2009
A speaker at a recent conference told the attendees that ?at about $5 million in spend on outside counsel, law departments start wanting some technology, like matter management and e-billing.? To be sure, the speaker was hardly disinterested, being an...

Some titles at the top in the UK vary greatly from US titles

Posted on May 03, 2009
The Advisory Panel of the CLO Programme includes nine top lawyers. Those lawyers have titles that are not run-of-the mill titles for their US counterparts (the titles I reflexively use in posts, such as general counsel and chief legal officer)....

Legal departments (or corporations) accounted for about seven percent of recent Patent Bar registrants

Posted on May 03, 2009
PatentBuddy.com maintains a database of employment statistics for registrants to the U.S. Patent Bar. For the six-month period ending March 30, 2008, the company identified about 1,000 new patent agent/attorney registrations. Among those, 69 (6.8%) were ?affiliated with corporations...

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