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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

Vive la France, but meanwhile, let?s have more management information about French legal departments

Posted on November 07, 2010
The fourth release of the General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey has among its 702 participants seven from France. During 2011, that number will surely increase dramatically. Meanwhile, the modest showing impelled me to see whether this blog has offered...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #140: posts longa, morsels breva

Posted on November 07, 2010
Historical note on the first female GC in the US. The first woman to become a general counsel of a Fortune 500 company was Mary Ann Hynes, appointed by CCH Inc. in 1979. Thank you, Corp. Counsel, Oct. 2010 at...

A metaphor for specialist lawyers as avatars of law school courses

Posted on November 07, 2010
I have long had in my mind a metaphor to describe specialist in-house lawyers. It hearkens back to my law school years: courses on anti-trust, corporations, environmental law, intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, and tax. Larger law departments have...

702 law departments in this week?s release of the GCM global benchmark metrics (no cost, easy to complete, get your report in six weeks)

Posted on November 03, 2010
The fourth release will go out this weekend. It clearly and comprehensively displays aggregate data from 702 law departments. Their companies are based in 46 countries ? 51% US ? and employ in total more than 20,000 lawyers. The 25...

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Send your lawyers in a group to a law firm for training

Posted on November 03, 2010
In a creative twist on the standby of having a law firm come to the legal department and train, consider turning that inside out. The general counsel of Hitachi Data Systems, Chris Leslie, brought nearly 20 lawyers from the department...

Collective action by general counsel: amicus briefs in support of US Supreme Court cert petitions

Posted on November 03, 2010
Despite huge amounts of work on their department?s plates, sometimes general counsel add more for the greater, longer term good. An appeal to the US Supreme court by Wal-Mart, regarding a massive class action certification, has gained 19 companies as...

Fixed fees have taken off at British Airways -- thoughts about prior familiarity of firm and department

Posted on November 03, 2010
As reported in Corp. Counsel, Nov. 2010 at 18, about British Airways, ?70 percent of the London-based airline?s legal work is conducted under fixed fees.? If you have historical data, if you bundle enough work on prospect, and if you...

Law departments should not invest much in training law firms? ?next generation?

Posted on November 02, 2010
When I give presentations on outside-counsel cost control methods, I often commend law departments that do not pay full rates for first- and second-year associates. A hand usually shoots up and the person asks ?But how will the next generation...

A broadside at the soft-underbelly of what only licensed US lawyers are entitled to do

Posted on November 02, 2010
The NYSBA J., Oct. 2010 at 36, discusses in an article on law schools several industry-wide changes general counsel can agitate for to benefit the profession (See my post of Nov. 1, 2010: broad initiatives of general counsel.). The third...

An average of $50+ million a year in fees for the eight firms chosen by Royal Dutch Shell?

Posted on November 02, 2010
Maybe my math is wrong, but Royal Dutch Shell appears to have uncapped a gusher for eight law firms. A paragraph in Corp. Counsel, Nov. 2010 at 18, states that the 800-lawyer in-house team recently ?cut its list of outside...

No sign of sign-on bonuses for newly-hired in-house attorneys

Posted on November 02, 2010
A question on a LinkedIn group asked about the commonness of signing bonuses for law department lawyers below very senior levels. I answered that I think these are infrequent. A general counsel might approve a bonus if the salary structure...

Activism urged on general counsel for the long-term good of law departments

Posted on November 01, 2010
The NYSBA J., Oct. 2010 at 36, discusses in an article how law schools need to evolve. In one paragraph, the author mentions three ways that general counsel could wield their influence for the greater good of the profession. They...

Not all practice areas are created equal when it comes to the availability of benchmark metrics

Posted on November 01, 2010
Some practice areas produce more metrics than others, with the counseling side of life being the most metrically-challenged. Litigation teems with numbers while those who primarily give legal guidance scramble for any metrics. I grappled with this imbalance in my...

Executives should neither retain outside counsel nor communicate with them independently

Posted on November 01, 2010
It should be irrefragable that business executives do not retain outside counsel on their own. With rare exceptions, such as the CEO once in a long while or a Board committee, the legal department should be the sole arbiter of...

Kudos for full allocation at JPMorgan Chase of legal expenses to business units that incurred them

Posted on November 01, 2010
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, ?insists on full allocation of overhead ? everything from legal to marketing expenses ? to the parts of the business that use them.? I favor that discipline: the legal department should allocate its...

Abolish engagement letters (aka retention letters) from law departments

Posted on November 01, 2010
Recently, the general counsel of two different legal departments have described their departments? practice to send law firms an engagement letter for each matter. I scratch my head and wonder how that benefits the department (See my post of Feb....

ISO 9000 Certificates as an oblique indicator of the world?s number of law departments

Posted on October 31, 2010
Several years ago, an article in the Admin. Sciences Quarterly, June 2002 at 219, explored the diffusion of ISO 9000 Certificates throughout the world. What caught my eye was a chart that showed 34 countries and the amazing number of...

Halstead metrics for software complexity and an extrapolation to agreement complexity

Posted on October 31, 2010
A computer scientist named Maurice Halstead devised a measure of software complexity and the mental effort required to create it. As explained in IEEE Spectrum, Oct. 2010 at 34, the quantitative measurements, later called Halstead metrics, ?counted the number of...

Seven reasons why clients might perceive law departments to be slow

Posted on October 31, 2010
Consider these reasons why clients might criticize the speed of their legal team. The in-house lawyers might be not very capable. They lack training, draw on inadequate experience, or make do with feeble intelligence The law department might be understaffed...

Part of value negotiations with law firms can be reductions in liability risks

Posted on October 31, 2010
An in-house lawyer based in England told me that many law firms their negotiate caps on their firm?s liabilities. In return for granting discounts or other economic concessions, firms may ask law departments to limit their liabilities in malpractice actions...

Arrange for periodic question and answer sessions for members of the law department with the chief legal officer

Posted on October 31, 2010
I recently took part in an all-lawyer conference for a very large legal department. The general counsel laid out clearly a set of beliefs of what characterizes a classy law department. At the end, for more than 30 minutes, the...

Legal heads must stay on message and repeat over and over fundamental points they believe

Posted on October 31, 2010
General counsel need to become accustomed to repeating key messages when they speak with members of their department. The repetition of fundamental points, such as the value of teamwork, partnership with internal clients, respect for each other, and communication ?...

Conjectures on why procurement professionals seem uninterested in law department spending benchmarks

Posted on October 27, 2010
With more than 700 participants in the General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey of law departments, it?s bizarre that only five of them are from procurement or sourcing departments (See my post of May 26, 2010: notes early lack of...

If e-billing vendors disclose billing information of law firms, won?t firms refuse to permit such use?

Posted on October 27, 2010
I love actual data about law departments, hardly a surprise to steady readers, so I appreciate when data appears on what law firms charge per hour or per type of service (See my post of June 2, 2010: CT TyMetrix...

Performance benchmarks made possible based on verdict and settlement data

Posted on October 27, 2010
LexisNexis says its Verdict & Settlement Analyzer provides information about outcomes of previous similar cases. As described in Legal Tech. News, Oct. 2010 at 17, the software matches the characteristics of a case input to it against its database and...

?Corporate clients don?t have legal problems, they have business problems that require the involvement of lawyers?

Posted on October 26, 2010
This on-the-money quote appears in the NYSBA J., Oct. 2010 at 37, and is attributed to a senior lawyer at United Technologies. It hits the right note. In-house lawyers give their advice as part of a larger business problem. They...

References on this blog to law schools in relation to law departments

Posted on October 26, 2010
A large number of references on this blog to law schools have to do with years out of law school as a metric for benchmarks. In this vein are posts that have to do with law schools attended by in-house...

Eight principles for successful communities of practice

Posted on October 26, 2010
The brochure for a KM World conference contains a nutshell description of a session on this topic. The speaker?s blurb includes eight key themes that I quote below and comment on. [1]?communities should be independent of organization structure? ? the...

Two steps toward contract efficiency ? reduce the number of approvals and get e-signatures

Posted on October 26, 2010
A post on the blog of Emptoris relates some of the comments made by Steve Harmon, Cisco?s Senior Director of Legal Services at the Emptoris Empower 2010 conference. I highlight two points. ?As a best practice, Harmon emphasized the importance...

A couple of ideas for how a law department can engage with a local law school

Posted on October 25, 2010
Two ideas I had not heard of comes from an article in the NYSBA J., Oct. 2010 at 36, which primarily discusses improvements to law schools. Among the opportunities for in-house counsel to pitch in it mentions to ?collaborate with...

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