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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

GM?s legal department sold four patents it obtained for its technology

Posted on June 15, 2008
Unable to find software that met its needs, the legal department of General Motors created some customized applications. The ideas and coding must have been outstanding since Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 104, explains one of the supplemental....

Part IX of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on June 13, 2008
Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of May 27, 2008: Part VIII.) along with the number of posts cited within them. 1. Benchmarks other than individual metrics (See my post of May 29, 2008 ?...

So many cottage industries thrive on law departments! A village!

Posted on June 11, 2008
All manner of enterprises make a living off law departments. I term the teeming community the ?cottage industry? and have picked out parts of it from time to time to highlight (See my posts of April 18, 2005; Oct. 18,...

Some of the cognitive woes that stress causes

Posted on June 11, 2008
We learn from the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 85, May 2008 at 52, that stress causes the body to produce hormones called glucocorticoids. Those hormones over time wreak particular damage on cells in the hippocampus, a part of the brain...

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A new general counsel from outside the company often cleans house

Posted on June 11, 2008
What are the turnover rates in law departments when the new general counsel is promoted from within as compared to arrives from without? I have not seen data on departures of direct reports within the first year or 18 months...

Very high figures for external legal spend by an e-biller?s client base

Posted on June 11, 2008
An ad disguised as an article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2008 at 52, says that DataCert ?has completed more than 130 custom integrations? of its software and has ?72 Fortune 500 clients.? Assume, therefore, that DataCert has...

Two categories of service providers: investigators and counterfeit trackers

Posted on June 11, 2008
The Kreller Group specializes in providing due diligence and background investigations for companies, according to a profile in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 38. They serve as private-eyes for companies and are likely to be retained by...

Events that encourage headhunters to circle a law department

Posted on June 11, 2008
Various corporate upheavals, when they reach the headlines, may draw headhunters who try to lure away the law department?s best lawyers. Even general counsel who have tried hard to retain their talent can find themselves overtaken by these corporate events...

A metric on litigation and employment matters handled without using outside counsel

Posted on June 11, 2008
Praising the law department of Qwest Communications, Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 96, mentions that last year the department, winner of the magazine?s award for Best Legal Department of 2008, aspired to handle as much as possible of...

Rapid growth at an Abu Dhabi-based law department

Posted on June 11, 2008
Every now and then we learn of a law department that has expanded rapidly (See my posts of Feb. 19, 2006 #4: Home Depot; Nov. 19, 2005: Google: and Sept. 22, 2005: Wal-Mart.). In the U.S., the law department of...

Important terms diluted by over-use: best practice, innovation, leadership, strategic, world-class

Posted on June 11, 2008
Sloppy use of significant terms by those who care about the management internal legal teams creates clich�s and robs the terms of their punch. Five such words are particularly prone to be sprinkled too liberally. Rarely can we say that...

Out in front on leadership

Posted on June 11, 2008
The importance of leadership by general counsel and others in law departments is everywhere proclaimed (See my posts of Dec. 19, 2005: a key goal; Feb. 4, 2006: a key to best deployment of knowledge workers; May 10, 2006 and...

Six figure savings through Six Sigma at Caterpillar

Posted on June 11, 2008
Caterpillar?s 179-lawyer department follows the problem-solving approach of Six Sigma (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma and 18 references cited.). "They identify and solve problems by analyzing statistics, and measure the results to track their progress...

One out of five top compliance officers report to the general counsel

Posted on June 11, 2008
Compliance Week conducted a survey that InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 14, draws on for some metrics. Of the companies that responded, a third (31.7%) had a position called ?Chief Compliance Officer.? As to where the ?top compliance executive? reports, about...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #74 ? additions to earlier posts

Posted on June 11, 2008
Neurolawyering. Portfolio, June, 2008 at 114, offers us the neologism, cogniceuticals, ?for drugs that focus on improving decision-making, learning, attention span, and memory processes? (See my post of March 25, 2008: transcranial stimulation; April 22, 2008: caffeine...

Matter budgets: inside accountability and the principal-agent tension

Posted on June 11, 2008
One problem with matter budgets is how to have inside counsel negotiate tight budgets when they will later be judged on how closely they hit those budget numbers. Perhaps one solution is to uncouple the two efforts. The lower the...

Not safe for general counsel to enter the water

Posted on June 11, 2008
Mark Belnick, the former general counsel of Tyco, escaped criminal and SEC charges. Not surprisingly, he fulminates in InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 54, about the risks general counsel now face. Belnick says ?the threat of becoming the target of an...

Law firm used only for early case assessment

Posted on June 10, 2008
At a recent speaking engagement, I heard of a technology company that has retained a law firm to prepare assessments of litigation cases early in the case, even though the firm is not the chosen litigation counsel. It seems like...

Self praise for ?Legal recommendations in line with our core values? ? but whose aren?t?

Posted on June 10, 2008
A profile of the general counsel of Whole Foods Market, Roberta Lang, appears in InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 72. The all-natural food supermarket giant has seven in-house lawyers and they all are described as invested in the beliefs and values...

RFP processes for individual matters

Posted on June 10, 2008
In contrast to those law departments that seek through a Request for Proposal one or more firms to handle the work in a given area (See my post of June 10, 2008: Exelon?s process.), some law departments send our RFPs...

Observations on a large-scale RFP process by Exelon

Posted on June 10, 2008
InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 63, reports that Exelon Corp., the utility company, recently sent RFPs to 44 law firms and all but two of them responded. Some surveys have decried low rates of responses by law firms (See my post...

Four reasons why the general counsel ?is a good choice to help manage risk?

Posted on June 10, 2008
According to a panelist at the Fifth General Counsel Roundtable, Dec. 6, 2007 cited in a summary produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit at 8, the four reasons, draw on several advantages of a general counsel and his or her...

A fundamental challenge for general counsel: balancing company vs business unit views

Posted on June 10, 2008
Michael Helfer, the general counsel of Citigroup, addressed the Fifth General Counsel Roundtable, Dec. 6, 2007. As summarized by the Economist Intelligence Unit at 6, Helfer reflected on a fundamental management challenge: ?managing a legal function so that it supports...

Data that may not say much at all about convergence

Posted on June 10, 2008
An article on Requests for Proposals, from InsideCounsel, June 2008 at 64, includes a graphic based on the ACC/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey. The graphic shows ?the number of legal departments practicing convergence? as reported in surveys each year from...

Self praise for ???Legal recommendations in line with our core values??? ??? but whose aren???t?

Four reasons why the general counsel ???is a good choice to help manage risk???

More data on the ways in-house counsel find new law firms

Posted on June 09, 2008
In January of this year, John Lipsey, VP Corporate Counsel Services at Martindale-Hubble, surveyed thousands of corporate counsel in the U.S. ? without regard to whether or not they had a known relationship to Martindale. Some 730 responded. He wrote...

Legal-department retreats, some observations, and an article by Rees Morrison

Posted on June 06, 2008
One of the most common management activities among law departments, of all sizes, is the offsite (aka retreat, legal conference, annual meeting, etc.). As my article describes Download rees_morrison_retreats_91905.pdf , these gatherings can have wonderful events...

Ten Cs of employee engagement and corporate counsel correlates

Posted on June 06, 2008
Edward Russell-Walling, 50 Management ideas you really need to know (Quercus 2007) at 73, pushes alliteration a long way as he cites research that suggests 10 ways to help employees feel more engaged. 1. Connect ? ?leaders must actively show...

Commodity legal services, routine legal services, and standardized legal services: the same?

Posted on June 06, 2008
In his book, Theodore Levitt, Thinking about Management (Free Press 1991) at 64, Levitt writes dramatically that "routinization of anything is self-immolating. It deadens alertness, attentiveness, imagination, energy, and reaction time.? Other than that, I guess, routines are fine...

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