Law Department Management: In-House Counsel

Home -> Law Blog Directory -> In-House Counsel Blogs

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

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

Not a small point to have a consensus definition for a ?small? law departments

Posted on December 27, 2008
General counsel, consultants, vendors and others who swim in the law department pool would be better off if there were a generally-used definition of small law departments. Herewith are some of my thoughts on this small step toward standards. As...

Full-page ad by Chevron?s Law Function honors one of its lawyers for contributions outside the department

Posted on December 27, 2008
An entire page in the American Lawyer commands a hefty tab, but there it is on page 12? ?The Chevron Law Function is pleased to present the first annual William T. Coleman Award to José ?Jay? Layug.? (I think that...

Disappointment over the benefits hoped for from convergence

Posted on December 27, 2008
?Less than three-fourths of in-house counsel involved in convergence (68%) state that the strategy met their expectations, with a significant minority stating that the process did not meet expectations (25%), and a much smaller number stating that it exceeded expectations...

The ?burden of knowledge? on lawyers as the law accumulates and complicates

Posted on December 27, 2008
To grapple with ?legal complexity? is not for the simple minded (See my post of May 15, 2005: complexity of legal services generally; and June 28, 2005: legal complexity.), so a small item intrigued me. Inventors, it said, require ever-increasing...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Bill auditors who pore over invoices for compliance and saving

Posted on December 27, 2008
A gaggle of companies offer to review bills of law firms (See my post of Dec. 4, 2006: cottage industry of legal bill auditors; Dec. 16, 2007 #2: a law firm that reviews bills; Feb. 20, 2007: John Toothman; and...

Timekeepers everywhere, and some concerns about that fact by general counsel

Posted on December 27, 2008
Most of the observations on this blog about timekeepers have to do with too many timekeepers billing on matters (See my post of June 27, 2007: Pareto?s law and the number of timekeepers on matters; Nov. 8, 2005: number of...

An analysis of the gatekeeping independence of inside and outside counsel

Posted on December 27, 2008
How well do inside lawyers stand up to misconduct by their clients? Do partners at firms gatekeep more effectively? That is the topic of a column in ACC Docket, Vol. 26, Nov. 2008 at 22, where Ron Pol distills the...

It can mislead to simply ask a group of law departments what cost-saving techniques they use

Posted on December 26, 2008
I commend the First Law Department Operations Survey, published by InsideCounsel and Blickstein Group, but, like anyone who digs into survey data, wish it would ask in the next survey a different style of question. My example is the question...

Homage to to the humble, ubiquitous fax machine! Ecce Fax Romana

Posted on December 26, 2008
An inventor patented the facsimile in 1843. Fast forward 165 years and the utility is today universal. An important boost, according to Wired, Jan. 2009, at 47, came when courts ?gave the tech a crucial blessing by certifying that a...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #86 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on December 26, 2008
Hear a document to help you proofread it. Text Speaker, software from New York?s Deskshare, states on its website a feature some in-house counsel might like: ?Have the computer "read aloud" any text document. When you're proofreading, hearing the words...

Almost half of all administrators do not have a separate budget for operations

Posted on December 23, 2008
From the First Law Department Operations Survey, published by InsideCounsel and Blickstein Group with special contributions by David Cambria of Aon, we learn something odd about budgets for operations. Of the 50 total respondents, 27 answered the question...

Poach, promote or persuade: sources of law department administrators

Posted on December 23, 2008
Where do law department administrators come from? Data from the First Law Department Operations Survey, published by InsideCounsel and Blickstein Group, identifies the three most common sources. Of the 33 who responded to the question, about a quarter joined from...

Litigation exposure differences, perhaps, between public and private companies

Posted on December 23, 2008
The implication from a recent survey is that private companies face less litigation exposure than public companies. That may be true, the analysis ignores a significant third factor, size. The Fulbright & Jaworski 2008 Litigation Trends Survey writes that ?privately...

Many US companies with less than $100 million in revenue have an in-house lawyer

Posted on December 23, 2008
The chief blogster here would like to know how many US companies have an employed lawyer. I had thought the tipping point where a company hires its first attorney was several hundred millions in revenue, since the overall median of...

Needed: normalized lawsuits per billion dollars of revenue

Posted on December 23, 2008
One analysis missing from the Fulbright & Jaworski 2008 Litigation Trends Surveyis litigation activity normalized by revenue (See my post of Jan. 1, 2006: explanation of normalized data.). The report, based on input from 358 in-house counsel, tells about percentages...

Most important attributes for managers of law department operations

Posted on December 23, 2008
Consider another finding from the First Law Department Operations Survey, published by InsideCounsel and Blickstein Group in cooperation with Huron Consulting and David Cambria, Director of Operations, Law Department, Aon Corporation. The survey obtained responses from 50 administrators, and among...

My troll sense of humor: a patent by a law department for outside counsel management

Posted on December 23, 2008
Shortly after finding a patent application by the Legal Group of General Electric (See my post of Dec. 23, 2008: web-based Legal Management System.), I found another application, this one filed on March 21, 2005 on behalf of the law...

Knowledge of facts ? what is ? does not tell you what to change ? what ought to be

Posted on December 23, 2008
Susan Neiman?s Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grownup Idealists (Harcourt 2008) emphasizes that you cannot derive how things should be from the knowledge of how they are. That is, unless you hold very conservative views such as that our current...

In 2001, General Electric applied to patent a web-based Legal Management System

Posted on December 23, 2008
Wandering around on GoogleScholar, I happened upon an application for a US patent, No. US 2003/0074354 A1, filed on Jan. 17, 2001 by Suzanne Hawkins (in General Electric?s law department) and Mary Lee. In addition to the 10-page application are...

Outside counsel spend as a percentage of revenue has increased steadily over 25 years

Posted on December 21, 2008
My research into the antiquities of law department benchmarks unearthed an Altman Weil Special Report, dated 1982. A quarter century ago it reported data on 96 companies that had $1-$2 billion in revenue (possibly $5-10 billion dollars today). Dividing the...

A nominal trend downward over 25 years in lawyers per billion of revenue

Posted on December 21, 2008
The basic benchmark metrics relied on by general counsel change very little over time (See my post of Dec. 7, 2007: stability of staffing benchmarks.). For example, I exhumed an Altman Weil Special Report, dated 1982, that presented data on...

Each lawyer responsible for outside counsel try a quarterly cost-saving effort and report the results

Posted on December 21, 2008
Broadly speaking, my preferred approach to change in law departments has three components: (1) dive in without over-thinking, (2) encourage emergent change from the ground up that is flexible and multi-pronged, and (3) honor kaizen, the constant tinkering ? or...

At the end of a competition, presentations by the finalist law firms

Posted on December 21, 2008
Terms of disparagement slouch in every time you read about the last stage of a competitive bid: when the finalists bring their team members to meet with the selection group from the law department. Whether it is a ?beauty contest,?...

Most law-department administrators report to the general counsel

Posted on December 21, 2008
Law department administrators are responsible for operations of the department and a new survey offers many insights into that responsibility (See my post of Feb.13, 2008 administrators with 21 references.). This post kicks off a series about the First Law...

Change management is a loosy-goosy term

Posted on December 21, 2008
The term ?change management? unnerves me. It claims to describe what seems to be a highly amorphous field (See my post of May 15, 2005: change management at the NLRB.). Even so, I have written about aspects of change in...

Should law departments produce accrual figures monthly?

Posted on December 21, 2008
Wondering about this, I posted a question to the Law Department Management group on LinkedIn [Reader, join me on LinkedIn!]. Two responses, edited slightly by me, offer insights into an answer: No. Matt Williams, a lawyer at Safeco, wrote: ?It...

Competitive bids projected to penetrate only slightly during coming five years

Posted on December 21, 2008
If projections come true, five years from now law departments? efforts to have law firms compete for their work are foreseen will be only somewhat more common. Surveyed on Legal OnRamp, (See my post of Sept. 21, 2008: social networks...

Uniform Task-Based Management System ? no thanks [metapost UTBMS 8]

Posted on December 21, 2008
My sense is that adherence to the venerable Uniform Task-Based Management System codes is declining (See my post of April 20, 2008: precursor to the code system; Dec. 1, 2006: criticize UTBMS efforts; and May 1, 2006: shrinking usage of...

One firm proposes, another disposes ? a clever budget technique?

Posted on December 18, 2008
Marinate on this. When a new case arrives that looks like it will incur significant fees, have a capable firm (the budget firm) prepare a budget -- with its key assumptions expressed clearly. Tell the budget firm that another firm... pa href="http://feeds...

By 2013, 20% or more of the legal advice firms currently charge for will be free on the Web

Posted on December 18, 2008
Some people foresee increasing amounts of law-related information available for free online. Yet of a group of 84 in-house counsel at large companies, all of whom are technologically savvy enough to belong to Legal OnRamp and completed a recent survey,...

Previous | Next

Related Law Bulletins

Insurance Department Issues Second Annual Ohio Medical Liability Closed Claim Report
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Insurance has issued its secon...

Injury Verdict Upheld in Chicago Police Department Auto Accident
A verdict awarded from a personal injury case in Chicago against t...

Department Of State Update on Implementation of E3 Visas for Australians
Our office receives many questions about when the new E-3 visa cat...