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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

Four functions, other than traditional legal ones, that report to European general counsel

Posted on August 12, 2008
In early 2007, 84 general counsel of ?leading multinational companies? submitted survey data on the functions that report to them other than traditional legal functions. The general counsel are largely from companies with their headquarters in Northern Europe or the...

Collections of posts here on more than 100 topics ? email and ask me for one

Posted on August 12, 2008
During the past four years, I have collected related posts into what I call ?metaposts? (See my post of May 13, 2007: explanation of metaposts.). Starting with the first metapost, published on October 14, 2005, I created 9 in 2005,...

More observations on general counsel compensation at Fortune 500 companies

Posted on August 12, 2008
In Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15 Aug. 2008 at 76, Amy Miller reports on the Fortune 500 general counsel who were among their company?s five highest-paid officers in 2007. I assembled the averages of their cash and equity compensation in a...

General counsel at huge US companies are handsomely rewarded

Posted on August 12, 2008
Of the Fortune 500 general counsel who were among their company?s five highest-paid officers in 2007, the 100 with the highest cash compensation had an average salary of $567,195. Twice as high, at $1,039,931 was their average bonus/nonequity incentive cash...

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The sibling role of the general counsel, corporate secretary

Posted on August 12, 2008
In the United States, many general counsel also serve as the corporate secretary. Hence, among other tasks of that role, they are responsible for minutes of Board meetings, corporate governance documents, and the logistics of the Board (See my posts....

Allocation of responsibilities within the legal department of multinational companies

Posted on August 05, 2008
Regarding assignment of structure and responsibilities, the three most common choices from a recent survey were ?mainly by business area or product line? (25.3%), ?mainly by area of law? (25.3%) and mainly by geographic area (16.9%). This data dates from...

How long after payment of an invoice can you examine the billing records of a law firm?

Posted on August 05, 2008
I do not think that payment of an invoice forecloses a law department from challenging any charges on it at a later date. Prompt payment arrangements expressly reserve such a right, but otherwise what is the law for how long...

Additional posts after my article on matter management systems

Posted on August 05, 2008
In September 2006, I wrote an article for Legal Times about the number of groups affected by a matter management system (MMS). Scouring the 3,400 posts on this blog, I find that I have returned to matter management systems frequently....

Dispersion of lawyers at Sarah Lee but centralized reporting

Posted on August 05, 2008
The law department of Sarah Lee has 30 lawyers in 11 offices worldwide. That description comes from Corp. Bd. Mbr., Vol. 11, July/Aug. 2008 at 80, in a piece on its former general counsel, Rick Palmore. Palmore has recently moved...

GE?s 12 percent reduction in costs between 2003 and 2005 from a 75% reduction in firms used

Posted on August 05, 2008
When Brackett Denniston became General Counsel of General Electric Co. four years ago, the company used 450 outside law firms. Denniston thought that many of those firms were not used enough for them to develop a strong feel for the...

Some waves come back from offshoring, such as patent prep at General Electric

Posted on August 05, 2008
Going against the wave of offshoring, General Electric?s law department has begun to handle many more patents in-house, "a change that produces more and better patents with no increase in expenses." No more details are in the article from Corp....

Hundreds of millions saved at GE by early case assessment and resolution

Posted on August 05, 2008
A brainchild of Brackett Denniston, the General Counsel of General Electric, is the so-called early-dispute-resolution program. According to Corp. Bd. Mbr., Vol. 11, July/Aug. 2008 at 76, "it has saved GE hundreds of millions of dollars in just three years...

Well-regarded law firms help a company avoid a governmental investigation

Posted on August 05, 2008
?By hiring an outfit the government views as credible, thorough, and capable, directors make it more likely that the government will trust the firm's investigation and forgo its own, which would be more disruptive.? The perspective of this quote, predictably...

More on the convergence effort of The Linde Group, and post-merger layoffs

Posted on July 28, 2008
I wrote before on the convergence program of Linde Group (See my post of June 18, 2007.). More information about its circumstances appear in FocusEurope, Summer 2008, at 31. The article mentions that both Honeywell and Brady Corporation have chosen...

An excellent article on making values count in decisions

Posted on July 28, 2008
All decisions, including those made by in-house attorneys, are based on values and involve an implicit or explicit trade-off of values. That being true, attorneys will make better decisions if they have a methodology for addressing the values inevitably present...

Several important hiring criteria, according to a recent survey, only apply after some use

Posted on July 28, 2008
One question in a recent survey about satisfaction with law firms, from Inside Counsel, July 2008 at 47, asked in-house counsel to rank on importance at least 10 criteria they apply when hiring outside counsel. In order, the eight highest-ranking...

Strong law departments lose talented lawyers ? and to a degree that?s a good thing

Posted on July 28, 2008
We admire law departments that regularly hive off general counsel to other companies. We recognize that strong talent may have too little head room in one department, but can stand tall elsewhere (See my posts of Dec. 19, 2007: inevitable...

Steeplechase for the general counsel who takes the position from outside the company

Posted on July 28, 2008
It?s tough to accept the general counsel position from outside the company. Consider imported CEOs. An article in strategy + business, Summer 2008 at 80, looks at the performance of companies that promoted an insider CEO compared to those that...

Not every in-house lawyer wants to become the general counsel

Posted on July 28, 2008
Every time you hear about ?the problem of career paths? for corporate counsel, you hear that the discontent wells up in part because ?there is only one GC position.? The implication is that everyone below that level aspires to topple...

Lawyers who ?plateau? should not be disparaged

Posted on July 28, 2008
A pejorative air hangs around the term ?plateaued,? as in ?Sometimes veteran lawyers plateau.? The term leaves the unsavory impression that those lawyers no longer have any fire in the belly to be promoted or to take on new responsibilities....

Hard to draw clear lines for when someone in a law department should get a spot bonus

Posted on July 28, 2008
Spot bonuses of cash may be a wishful gleam in the eye for most, but some law departments have programs to reward members with an immediate check effort above and beyond the norm (See my post of Nov. 8, 2007:...

The odds you will reach settlement vary according to tryptophan and serotonin levels

Posted on July 27, 2008
If you are in in-house litigator and you sit down to hammer out a settlement with your opponents over a meal, be sure to serve plenty of tryptophan. It turns out that levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that seems...

Nothing seems difficult to the person who didn?t have to do it ? grading law firms

Posted on July 27, 2008
Year after year, InsideCounsel reports that law firms give themselves A grades for the services they deliver much more frequently than law departments give those law firms A grades. Specifically, in the latest survey from Inside Counsel, July 2008 at...

Good reporting of survey results tells how many respondents answered individual questions

Posted on July 27, 2008
Puzzling over the data from a survey where law departments rated the performance of their law firms, it occurred to me to make a point of methodology (See my post of July 21, 2008: survey methodology and 48 references cited.)....

A possible benchmark regarding offers extended and accepted

Posted on July 27, 2008
An article in strategy + business, Summer 2008 at 42, mentions that many Human Resources organizations track the number of job offers made by the law department and accepted. Such a metric might be insightful for large law departments that...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #76 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on July 27, 2008
A key driver of client service. ?A recent study found that perceptions of the importance of one?s job and its place in the organization?s endeavours had a bigger impact on loyalty and customer service than all other employee factors combined,?...

Part XI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on July 27, 2008
Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of July 20, 2008: Part X.) along with the number of posts cited within them. 1. Benefits perquisites entitlements (See my post of July 26, 2008 ? 12 posts.)...

A bonus! An extra listing about posts on bonus arrangements with law firms

Posted on July 27, 2008
It is easy to say: ?Set up bonus incentives for our law firms to motivate better performance.? Sometimes the goals of the company that will earn a law firm a bonus are tangible and straightforward to articulate (See my posts...

Global is a complex term, subject to many definitions and connotations

Posted on July 27, 2008
In two recent posts I discuss a conclusion drawn from a recent conference about globalization and its effects on law departments (See my posts of July 13, 2008 and July 27, 2008: is globalization driving the agendas of law departments.)....

Further commentary on my conclusion that a headline lacks quantitative reliability

Posted on July 27, 2008
I wrote on July 13th about a conclusion expressed in a headline regarding a recent conference. Based solely on the numbers stated in the post-conference press release, dated June 30, 2008, I questioned whether it was credible to create the...

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