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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

Self insurance by large US companies has moved claims to law and increased its size?

Posted on June 26, 2008
"Over the past few decades, Fortune 500 corporations have increasingly opted to self-insure, with retentions of at least $3 to $5 million per occurrence and often $25 million or more. They look to insurance companies only for coverage of catastrophic...

Internal audit eyes a matter management system and its processes

Posted on June 26, 2008
During a presentation recently, the finance manager of a large law department mentioned that in 2007 his company?s internal audit group had reviewed the legal department?s processes. He proudly added that internal audit gave the department a ?strong? rating...

Do ethical companies spend less on their legal budgets?

Posted on June 26, 2008
The issue of Ethisphere, Qtr. 2, 2008 highlights the 93 companies that the Ethisphere Institute honors in 2008 as ?the world?s most ethical companies.? Of them, 29 are not US companies (and for six of them I have done consulting...

The commonness of some of the common words related to law-department management

Posted on June 26, 2008
A fascinating website, for peculiar people like this blogger who revels in words, is Word Count. Based on a massive archive, the website tells you the frequency with which 86,800 English words have been used in print. Naturally, I tried...

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The fraction of your company?s value you would attribute to your legal function

Posted on June 26, 2008
A special supplement to the Fin. Times, June 9, 2006 at 5, delves into the views of CFOs on risk management. The two professors who wrote the piece had asked 334 CFOs ?What fraction of your company?s value would you...

This post is entitled ?titles?

Posted on June 26, 2008
In law departments, titles are important for showing where someone stands in the hierarchy, for morale, and for status (See my posts of Jan. 27, 2006: titles should reflect and explain the work staff does; Jan. 24, 2006: try to...

We need a multiple regression of lawyer experience against staffing levels and spend

Posted on June 26, 2008
The varying elements of experience for an in-house attorney consist of the attorney?s (1) formal education, (2) years since graduation from law school, (3) years in the current company?s law department, (4) degree of legal specialization over time, (5) actual...

Individual lawyers, making risky decisions, are the key to saving money on outside counsel

Posted on June 26, 2008
All the techniques in the world for outside-counsel cost control make barely a dent unless the in-house lawyers who direct firms willingly set their shoulders to the yoke. The hard pulls of choosing not to retain counsel, but if so...

Priorities for in-house counsel

Posted on June 26, 2008
When we use the term ?productivity,? we should not mean in-house lawyers just churning out lots of work, but rather lawyers completing lots of important legal work. A good lawyer picks out the services that help the client the most....

Whether trust in outside counsel outranks all other criteria

Posted on June 20, 2008
Eversheds report, ?Law firm of the 21st century? at 8, has a curious finding. ?The majority of clients (58%) emphasised that trust would continue to be of absolute importance in the client-lawyer relationship, more so than in other professional advisory...

A truism for all buyers, over-heatedly applied to buyers of legal services

Posted on June 20, 2008
The Eversheds report, ?Law firm of the 21st century? at 5, pronounces a commonplace as if it were a revelation. ?The key challenge facing buyers of external legal services over the next ten years is controlling costs and achieving value...

Bonus to law firm for reductions in law suits for and against the client

Posted on June 20, 2008
As part of its arrangement with Tyco International, the law firm Eversheds has incentives to meet specified measures of client satisfaction. According to an article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2008 at 71, the company and firm agreed...

Digging into some savings figures for e-billing technology

Posted on June 20, 2008
"AOL reported that the solutions provided by DataCert save the global web services giant $7.33 million within the first year of implementation," explains an item in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2008 at 52 The source for this statement...

Geographically dispersed lawyers, but a tool to help them reach each other

Posted on June 20, 2008
An article in ACC Docket, Vol. 30, June 2008 at 85, discusses General Electric?s Asia-Pacific legal group. It has about 140 lawyers located in 11 countries as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan. In only three locations do more than...

Diverse commentary on this blog regarding diversity

Posted on June 17, 2008
A number of posts ? 29 by my count ? have dealt with aspects of diversity in law departments. As a descriptive term, diversity takes on many hues (See my posts of Sept. 4, 2005: defining a diverse lawyer; Sept....

An example of crossing the line from lawyer to business executive

Posted on June 17, 2008
At one company on a panel at the Fifth General Counsel Roundtable, Dec. 6, 2007, summarized in a publication by the Economist Intelligence Unit, risk management is embedded within each business line. Risk management is overseen by a central risk...

Barristeristas? Starbucks varies from the typical ratio of one lawyer for every non-lawyer

Posted on June 17, 2008
ACC Docket, Vol. 30, June 2008 at 44, explains how the law department of Starbucks Coffee Company uses paralegals ?to perform a significant volume of real estate and intellectual property work.? The company?s global legal department is comprised of approximately...

Two steps headquarters lawyers can do to keep field lawyers feeling part of the team

Posted on June 17, 2008
The law department of Starbucks Coffee Company has devised a way to help remote lawyers from feeling out of sight and out of mind. Through a somewhat informal process, lawyers based at headquarters select a ?buddy? lawyer in the field....

An example of legal services for real estate priced on a fixed fee

Posted on June 17, 2008
Six firms in the United States serve all the considerable real estate legal needs of Starbucks. The company has negotiated fixed fees with those firms based on a fairly predictable volume of work that arises from expansion. For quite a...

Instruct law firms how to handle calls directly from clients

Posted on June 17, 2008
Sabine Chalmers, chief legal officer of InBev, writes in ACC Docket, Vol. 30, June 2008 at 14, about the "sticky area of whom the law firm should accept instructions from.? She notes that being clear on what the law firm...

A popularity ranking for blogs covering in-house legal departments

Posted on June 17, 2008
USLaw Blog Directory lists this blog and five others under its heading ?Law Blogs.? For each blog it gives a description as well as the average number of posts per day and, most intriguing to me, a ?popularity ranking.? Aha,...

A project team to evaluate replacement of a document management system

Posted on June 15, 2008
The needs and desires of many people ought influence managers of a law department when they select department-wide software. For example, the law department of Saint-Gobain Corporation, whose 43 employees are part of the $60 billion Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, need...

In-house legal teams and alignment with clients

Posted on June 15, 2008
To be synchronized with their clients, shadows of the business executives moving hand-in-hand toward the company?s efforts ? that is alignment for a law department (See my posts of Sept. 21, 2005: activities aligned with client goals; and May 10,...

Harbinger of lower litigation costs: an upsurge of circumstances that favor defendants

Posted on June 15, 2008
Panelists at the Fifth General Counsel Roundtable, Dec. 6, 2007, summarized in a publication by the Economist Intelligence Unit at 13, think that some litigation is on the decline. ?The pendulum has indeed shifted in favor of defendants," and for...

MBA?s galore at Caterpillar?s law department

Posted on June 15, 2008
?[Caterpillar] has paid for dozens of attorneys to earn MBAs from the University of Chicago.". Since the department has 179 attorneys -- of which only 58 are US-based -- that means quite a high percentage have taken advantage of this...

Law firm partners ought to value opportunities to train in-house counsel at clients

Posted on June 15, 2008
A 2007 survey by the Association of Corporate Counsel, reported in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 61, drew responses from 1,166 general counsel. When asked what initiatives outside counsel could implement to improve the relationship with their...

For purposes of whether to use RFPs, ?nondiscretionary legal spending? is nonsensical

Posted on June 15, 2008
A consultant, quoted in InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 66, asserts that ?work that involves discretionary spending would be more prone to the RFP process than litigation work, where nondiscretionary spending is a given.? Adding more, the consultant claims that ?Spending...

Unusual history between a law department and an e-discovery service provider

Posted on June 15, 2008
A paragraph about the law department of Qwest Communications, winner of Corporate Counsel?s Best Legal Department of 2008 award, intrigues me. A consultant worked closely with the legal department of Qwest for four years. "Qwest lawyers helped [the consultant] create...

Law departments of US companies with significant foreign revenue have many overseas lawyers

Posted on June 15, 2008
Of the 179 lawyers on Caterpillar?s legal team, 121 of them (68%) are based outside the United States. GM has nearly half its 236 lawyers based outside the U.S. and among McDonald?s 147 lawyers about half are based internationally. All...

A general counsel goes to bat for his troops and gets a valued exception to company policy

Posted on June 15, 2008
Winner of Corporate Counsel?s Best Legal Department of 2008 award, the law department of Qwest Communications leaves us with a good example of a general counsel who pushed for a benefit to his team. As explained in Corp. Counsel, Vol....

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