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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

In-house specialist lawyers and the schema created by the neocortex

Posted on April 23, 2008
The fewer the lawyers in a law department the more likely they are to be generalists. Yet specialization is the trend today, a trend that some investigators argue has neurological underpinnings. Research presented in the Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 31, Summer...

The marketing unclout of a law firm?s ethical infrastructure

Posted on April 22, 2008
A survey crossed my desk that asked general counsel to rate the importance to them, when they decide to hire a law firm, of 19 factors. Yes, 19. The last one on the list is ?Ethical infrastructure (e.g., ethics committees).?...

Law firms, law departments and the asymmetry of concern about money

Posted on April 22, 2008
This is a depressing and admittedly cynical view, but let me float the idea. Law firm partners spend much of their time thinking how to increase their revenue. Certainly, they practice law and care about those who pay their bills,...

Quantitative case analysis and some of its debilitations

Posted on April 22, 2008
Quantitative approaches to case evaluation have many proponents (See my posts of Oct. 24, 2005: decision-tree risk analysis software; Feb. 8, 2006: a step to prepare for mediation; Jan. 17, 2006: decision analysis; and June 18, 2007: belief nets compared...

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A word to the wise on a world of pharmaceuticals that might increase mental ability

Posted on April 22, 2008
A future where in-house lawyers and their external counsel use brain-boosting drugs may not be far away. Just as with steroid abuse in baseball, the winner-takes-all competitions of major league law will mean that some lawyers will dabble in powerful...

Drink to me only with thine caffeine ?

Posted on April 22, 2008
Here is a neurological gulp to go along with my sip on coffee previously espressoed (See my post of Dec. 19, 2007: grounds for insight.). Your brain continuously creates adenosine, a chemical that scientists believe causes mental fatigue. Caffeine blocks...

Conflicts, capacity, chemistry and competency all narrow what seems to be a range of desirable law firms

Posted on April 20, 2008
When an in-house lawyer needs to retain a law firm, the simplifying assumption outsiders make is that many firms of equivalent ability are available to vie for the privilege. Something close to a perfect market exists: many willing buyers transact...

Differences in aggressive behavior between men and women

Posted on April 20, 2008
An article in Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 31, Summer 2007 at 66, compares aggressive behavior in men and women. ?Psychologists have found that while men channel their aggression through purported ?rationality? (interrupting, criticizing unjustly, questioning others' judgments), women are more likely...

Skip task codes, try linguistic modeling on bills!

Posted on April 20, 2008
Richard A. Hall founded and is President/CEO of LexTech, Inc., a legal information consulting company. According to a post April 3, 2008 on Faikah?s Blog, Hall developed a task-based billing model built on extensive statistical analysis of hundreds of litigated...

Continuous flow of ideas about how to manage a law department does not necessarily lead to consensus

Posted on April 20, 2008
For some time I have thought that in the free market of ideas, where examples, experiences and exhortations about how best to manage an in-house team are widely circulated, the better ideas would rise to the top. Thereafter, the good...

Not too sure about this method of marketing by a law firm ? a firm?s client calls you, a prospect

Posted on April 20, 2008
An anecdote by a general counsel in the ACC Docket, Vol. 26, April 2008 at 101, left a burr under my saddle. Barry Nagler, the General Counsel of Hasbro, endorsed client referrals as one of a law firm?s most effective...

Quasi-legal work, knowledge management, technology, and offshoring all stirred together

Posted on April 20, 2008
The general counsel of the company best known for Church?s Chicken writes in ACC Docket, Vol. 26, April 2008 at 24, about a wonderful stew of management initiatives for legal departments (See my post of Oct. 19, 2007: Church?s Chicken...

Three reasons why PDAs create compulsive users

Posted on April 13, 2008
The Economist, April 12, 2008, at 8, sketches three addictive features of Blackberry use (or any PD). Since I have turned to the theme of destructive PDA-fixation before (See my post posts of April 3, 2005: productivity increases from PDAs,...

Routine UK legal queries to be answered by HSBC bank?s offshore center

Posted on April 13, 2008
Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, April 2008 at 100, reports that a team of four lawyers of HSBC Holdings, the global banking giant, will respond to routine queries on UK law from its global service center in Malaysia?s capital, Kuala Lumpur....

Four observations on a statement about data mapping software

Posted on April 13, 2008
The responsibilities of Leslie Lawson, the paralegal in charge of e-discovery for Eastman Chemical Co., include reviewing software that might help her tasks. In Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, April 2008 at 76, an article describes Lawson?s role and mentions that...

Understand how discounts cut into firm profit margins, and drive demand for more volume

Posted on April 13, 2008
For this post, keep in mind your primary law firm. If its average standard rate is $400 per hour with a gross margin of 35 percent, the firm makes a profit of $140 each hour. The 10-percent discount ($40 per...

Electronic receipt of invoices should be treated separately from transmission of approved invoices to accounts payable

Posted on April 09, 2008
One worthy objective is to receive bills from law firms in electronic format; a second objective, distinctly more complicated, is to convey the information about bills your have approved to your company?s accounts payable system. Be that system Oracle, SAP,...

Twins (2), braids (3), and DNA (4) as metaphors for the number of fundamental management concerns

Posted on April 09, 2008
Two overarching and equal terms could describe all of law department management: people and processes. The concept of people encompasses all aspects of talent management, cognitive styles, and leadership. We might even include outside counsel in people...

Quasi-legal tasks and the blog posts here that have addressed them

Posted on April 09, 2008
For all I have lashed out at tasks that should fall below the radar of in-house attorneys ? which I refer to as quasi-legal services ? I certainly have banged on about them. Many posts have fingered suspects (See my...

Reward systems for inventors, and their knock-on effect for in-house patent lawyers

Posted on April 09, 2008
In a company that patents inventions frequently, the legal department can improve many aspects of its contribution to that process. Lawyers can educate clients (See my post of May 10, 2006: Kraft Foods.), use technology (See my post of March...

An argument for intellectual property not reporting to the general counsel: little commercial savvy

Posted on April 09, 2008
"At most companies, responsibility for intellectual property still resides in the legal counsel's office rather than with the chief technology officer, chief financial officer, or some other manager responsible for guiding financial and commercial growth...

To freeze billing rates on specific matters might be better than to obtain discounts

Posted on April 08, 2008
You might easily obtain from one of your primary law firms a discount on its standard hourly rates of, let us say, five percent. You could pat yourself on the back. A few months later, the firm might raise its...

Commuting time as productive time

Posted on April 08, 2008
Many lawyers drive to and from their office. They can make productive use of that time. For example, they can listen to voicemail and return calls. They can jot down notes of what they need to do during the day...

Three reasons why lawyers, being human, are bad at making predictions

Posted on April 08, 2008
Ian Ayres, Super-Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart (Bantam 2007) at 112, explains that ?The human mind tends to suffer from a number of well-documented cognitive failings and biases that distort our ability to predict accurately...

Law departments commonly talk with their law firms about collaborative technologies

Posted on April 08, 2008
A recent survey found that ?Approximately one-third (30%) of in-house counsel sought input from their law firms when evaluating collaborative technologies that they would use together, primarily online matter management and ebilling systems.? This finding comes from the 2007 ACCA/Serengeti...

Reported savings from matter management and e-billing systems

Posted on April 08, 2008
In the 2007 ACCA/Serengeti Managing Outside Counsel Survey, selected results of which are presented in ACC Docket, Vol. 26, April 2008 at 14, you can ponder some whiplash metrics. ?Average reported savings from using matter management systems were 8% of...

Costs to relocate lawyers

Posted on April 08, 2008
From time to time, law departments recruit senior lawyers who need to be relocated. Alternatively, law departments move lawyers from one location to another (See my post of Oct. 10, 2005: ex pat pay and relocations; May 27, 2007: mass...

Pervasive mistrust by law departments who doubt that law firms manage costs well

Posted on April 08, 2008
Lexakos recently released the results of its Chief Legal Officer 2008 Strategic Planning Survey of more than 100 chief legal officers. According to the press release by Rick Wolf, Lexakos? founder, ?only 21% trust outside counsel to manage costs and....

Rees Morrison leaves Thomson, forms his own consulting firm

Posted on April 06, 2008
After 20 years of consulting exclusively to law departments -- as a Director with PriceWaterhouse, and a Partner at Arthur Andersen, Altman Weil and Hildebrandt/Thomson -- I have started my own independent practice. Starting April 1st, it has been exciting...

Multiple recipients of payments at each law firm retained, and the administrative costs to a department

Posted on April 06, 2008
A very large financial institution wanted to know how many different payment destinations it was paying to the 40 law firms it paid the most. Although using Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments, the institution nevertheless was shocked to discover that...

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