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

Listen to this prognostication: law departments will use hypersonic sound to communicate

Posted on March 25, 2008
Hypersonic sound broadcasts audio in a focused beam, so that only a person standing directly in its path hears the message. The big brotherness of what I am about to write feels creepy, but it may be that law departments...

Randomized tests and experiments by law departments

Posted on March 25, 2008
Ian Ayres, Super-Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart (Bantam 2007) describes in Chapter 2 how business uses randomized tests to learn more about their markets. For one group of consumers, picked at random, they do something....

The activities of in-house patent lawyers, aside from litigation

Posted on March 25, 2008
As with all in-house attorneys, patent lawyers need to be managed to help them most efficiently go about their duties. Law Department Management has accumulated quite a few posts on the range of work they do that is not adversarial...

Some data about plans of general counsel not to expand internal litigation support staff

Posted on March 25, 2008
The recent report by Lexakos, Chief Legal Officer 2008 Strategic Planning Survey, draws on responses from more than 100 chief legal officers. According to Rick Wolf, founder of Lexakos, 86 percent of them ?do not plan to expand internal staff...

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

How to reduce the number of law firms you retain -- a convergence project

Posted on March 25, 2008
A number of posts on this blog have addressed aspects of convergence, but none of them have explained how best to accomplish it (See my post of Feb. 18, 2008: reprise of convergence and references cited.). Here are seven steps...

360-degree assessments from several angles

Posted on March 25, 2008
A talent tool that all general counsel should understand is the 360-degree assessment (See my post of Dec. 26, 2007: worries about confidentiality of 360s and five references cited.). Assessments are available for specific companies and certain industries, but I...

Send sample cases to law departments to compare inside and outside costs. Really?

Posted on March 25, 2008
The UK-based law firm Eversheds posted on Legal OnRamp a document about a conclave with its Advisory Board (See my posts of March 23, 2008: additional background and two ideas; and Aug. 3, 2005: Baxter?s Litigation Advisory Board.). A comment...

How to handle law firm budgets on matters

Posted on March 25, 2008
Here are some of the ways to find success with single-matter budgets by law firms. 1. Have a couple of examples of budgets available to send to law firms (See my post of Dec. 15, 2006.). 2. Develop budget requirements...

Moot court judges as pro bono and promoters of law department practice

Posted on March 23, 2008
I graduated from Columbia Law School in 1978 and each year the school invites me to serve as a judge for the first-year moot court program. Twice I have done so and I plan to don the powdered wig this...

Another network of law firms, ALFA International

Posted on March 23, 2008
A profile of the new chairman of ALFA International, published in Law Firm Inc., Vol. 6, March/April 2008 at 19, caught my eye and adds to my collection of law-firm networks and associations (See my post of Feb. 21, 2008:...

Call to Action Summit to goad progress on diversity in the law

Posted on March 23, 2008
According to an email I received, the Call to Action Summit, taking place April 24 - 25 in Scottsdale, AZ, expects to bring together more than 100 managing partners and chief legal officers to discuss the issue of workplace diversity...

Patent Review Committees as a management microcosm ? four general management lessons

Posted on March 23, 2008
Companies that generate even a modest number of potentially patentable ideas almost always put in place a group that reviews the invention disclosures and determines which of them ought to be patented and in which jurisdictions. Often called a Patent...

Stretching to include another point on price inelasticity faced by law departments

Posted on March 23, 2008
My friend Ron Friedmann of Integreon emailed me about my post on price inelasticity (See my post of March 20, 2008.). The original posting discussed three ways that law departments can cope in a world where they cannot raise prices....

From an advisory board of a Magic Circle firm, contract costs and SLAs

Posted on March 23, 2008
The UK-based law firm Eversheds posted on Legal OnRamp a document about its Advisory Board. The Advisory Board consists of senior members of legal teams and, apparently, the firm convenes it every now and then to share ideas on various...

Let me raise the lance again against ?risk management?

Posted on March 23, 2008
The new general counsel of General Mills, Roderick Palmore, is responsible not only for the company?s legal function but also for compliance and risk management. As reported in InsideCounsel, March 2008 at 13, the three areas are not uncommon responsibilities...

Part VI of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on March 23, 2008
Here are ten more embedded metaposts with links (See my post of Feb. 27, 2008: Part V.). 1. Attorney-client privilege (See my post of Feb. 16, 2008 ? 18 posts.) 2. Bill review (See my post of March 2, 2008...

Does in-house pay correspond to the value of a practice area to the company?

Posted on March 20, 2008
What truth is there in the following quote? Do general counsel pay more to lawyers whose specialties are vital to the company? "Large corporations, for example, place a high value on limiting their tax liabilities. The most talented corporate tax...

Mission statements as wastes of time

Posted on March 20, 2008
Someone needs to convince me that a summary of a law department?s aspirations ? aka mission statement ? makes any provable difference to the department?s effectiveness. Common in business they may be (See my posts of May 14, 2005 and...

Law departments face price inelasticity, and have three ways to deal with it

Posted on March 20, 2008
A speaker from a financial-services firm, who obviously has an economics background, describes law departments as ?businesses with no price elasticity? (See my post of April 27, 2006: explains the term elasticity.). By that he means that law departments cannot...

What law departments could gain if they shared evaluations and data about law firms

Posted on March 20, 2008
I have speculated on how groups of law departments might share confidential evaluations they make of law firms (See my post of May 14, 2006.). Multi-source data would enable contributor departments to manage their external costs more effectively. What are...

What law departments could gain if they shared evaluations and data about law firms

Thoughts on marketing by law firms and the susceptibility of in-house attorneys to ads

Posted on March 20, 2008
Tom Wakefield, the general counsel of Cessna Aircraft, praises Stinson Morrison Hecker in an ad, one of which is in InsideCounsel, March 2008 at 54 (See my posts of May 27, 2007: five examples of senior lawyers in ads; and...

Human capital theory and job fit as applied to law departments

Posted on March 20, 2008
Human capital theory is the reigning economic theory of what determines wages. "Human capital theory explains differences in wage rates by differences in education, training, experience, intelligence, motivation, and other human factors that influence productivity...

Interim general counsel and what that role suggests

Posted on March 20, 2008
From time to time, companies appoint an interim general counsel when the incumbent leaves suddenly. Examples include Home Depot (See my post of March 16, 2008: layoffs at Home Depot and interim GC Jim Snyder.), Sears, and Coca-Cola (See my...

An elegant set of recent articles on legal-department productivity ? email it to a colleague!

Posted on March 05, 2008
This is one post you might wish to email to anyone you know who cares about efficiency in a law department. The PDF consists of six articles by me on that topic. Click here to download the compilation. Download rees_morrison_articles_compilation_productivity...

A foundational decision for a general counsel: to make or buy legal experience

Posted on March 05, 2008
Some law departments pride themselves on handling as much legal work of their company as possible (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: company handles most litigation in-house.). Other departments stay small and buy the services of law firms for...

Trading cycle-time reduction against leaving cases dormant

Posted on March 05, 2008
Many law departments have touted shortening the time cases last as a good aid to budget discipline (See my posts of Sept. 28, 2007: cost-control technique; May 16, 2006: FMC Technologies? reductions; and May 23, 2007 GE on reduction of...

On outside counsel guidelines, hardline and detailed or broad and directional

Posted on March 05, 2008
In a recent article, published in CCCA, the quarterly of the Canadian Corp. Counsel Association (Fall 2007 at 10), I distinguish between elaborate guidelines for outside counsel and more ?constitutional? statements of basic principles. If you want to see a...

How to go off the chart with the familiar org chart

Posted on March 05, 2008
Organization charts barely rank when you list what?s important about how to run a law department, but they also serve who only box and line. It is still useful for general counsel to be able to depict their legal team...

Policies on spending minimums for budgets of law firms on individual matters

Posted on March 04, 2008
Law departments that seek budgets from their outside counsel need to grapple with the threshold (or thresholds) for those budgets. They need some guidelines for what level of anticipated spending triggers a budget. Paul Roy, Director of Finance & Administration...

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...