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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

Descriptions of ideal legal department help less than a focus on what actually happens

Posted on June 16, 2010
Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics, explains in The Idea of Justice (Harvard Univ. 2009) at 6-7 et seq., the difference between what he calls ?transcendental institutionalism? and ?realization-focused comparison.? Fancy words from a philosopher, but they boil down to...

Let?s count some signs that we are embarking on the Decade of Data

Posted on June 16, 2010
The gradual move toward more and better data for general counsel has continued of late, or even picked up. We might be in the first year of a Decade of Data, given the developments and potentialities of the kind summarized...

Correlations between inside and outside spending

Posted on June 16, 2010
My inaugural column for the online InsideCounsel, dated May 24th, looked at an example of correlations between inside and outside spending of law departments. We are at an exciting point in law department research because the database of metrics from...

Internet tools and offerings retard our ability to concentrate, absorb, and learn

Posted on June 16, 2010
Quite fittingly, just after I wrote about software that shields users from interruptions like email, instant messaging, and online networks, I was distracted by an article in Wired, June 2010 at 116. The article compellingly argues that the cognitive effects...

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Diversity?s much touted benefits bump into research findings on ineffectiveness

Posted on June 16, 2010
?To the dismay of many, relative to homogeneous groups, members of diverse groups display less attachment to each other, show less commitment to their respective organizations, communicate less with one another, miss work more often, experience more conflict, and take...

For benchmark surveys, an example of how we might define ?litigation??

Posted on June 16, 2010
A recently published study of litigation had to set some parameters for the general counsel who responded to a survey. What activities should they count as ?litigation? and which should they excluded? ?Respondents were instructed not to consider internal investigations...

Insist on a pr�cis at the start of each large invoice

Posted on June 15, 2010
General Electric?s Brackett Denniston and Alex Dimitrief updated the chapter on billing in Bob Haig?s Successful Partnering series. In one section (14-37) they note that ?At GE, we now require our law firms to preface their monthly statements with a....

Third-party funders of major litigation: profiles of Burford Capital and Juridica

Posted on June 15, 2010
Up-to-date detail on two third-party funders of litigation comes from ALM?s Litigation 2010, Spring 2010 at 23. The article traces the background, start-up, and current operations of two of the best-known funders: Burford Capital Limited and Juridica...

Use software to disable distractions and increase your productivity

Posted on June 15, 2010
Some help has arrived for in-house lawyers who are diverted too easily by RSS feeds, instant messages, e-mail, social networks, Twitter, or Google alerts. The Economist, June 12, 2010 at 12, describes more than a dozen software add-ons, packages, or....

No overhead charges for contract attorneys or temps, according to GE

Posted on June 15, 2010
I have opposed surcharges by law firms for staff (attorneys and paralegals) they hire for specific projects (See my post of Feb. 16, 2007: American Lawyer survey of law firms on markups of contract attorneys; Feb. 18, 2007: NY State...

Freebies by law firms are a ?crucial factor? in decisions to instruct external law firms?

Posted on June 14, 2010
I doubt that in-house counsel decide to retain law firms because of inducements firms offer such as secondments and access to knowledge databases. Yet that is precisely what a recent report from Eversheds found, however. ?Law firm of the 21st...

Were general counsel genuine when they answered survey questions about outsourcing?

Posted on June 14, 2010
The report just issued by Eversheds, ?Law firm of the 21st century: The clients? revolution,? is based on questions asked of 130 general counsel. One finding regarding the post-recession world suggests a vigorous uptake of outsourcing. ?Just over a third...

?Modaliti�s alternatives de facturation? ? alternative fee arrangements ? in French legal teams

Posted on June 14, 2010
A survey of French legal departments by H�l�ne Trink and an executive search firm asked a group of general counsel about their plans in 2010 to pursue alternative fee arrangements (modaliti�s alternatives de facturation). Of the 81 general counsel who...

A puzzling finding as to a permanent shift in the client-lawyer balance of power

Posted on June 14, 2010
Eversheds, the globe-straddling UK firm, has published ?Law firm of the 21st century: The clients? revolution.? Based on questions asked of 130 general counsel and 80 law firm partners, Eversheds concludes that the ?current balance of power in the client-lawyer...

Another way to understand and clearly describe benchmark data ? a stem and leaf display

Posted on June 13, 2010
One way to help us understand a data set is a stem-and-leaf display. Click on the example below. It illustrates the 32 smallest law departments that took part in the General Counsel Metrics benchmark since the first release on June...

One quarter of US law departments average less than one law suit per year!

Posted on June 13, 2010
The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver surveyed law departments regarding litigation. What stunned me about the 485 valid responses to the survey was that ?112 respondents (almost one-quarter) indicated that...

An example of survey participation data excellently explained

Posted on June 13, 2010
The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS), part of the University of Denver, recently published a survey report. www.du.edu/legalinstitute/form-chieflegal-success.html The academics who conducted the survey of legal departments excel in their background explanation of how they...

Law department goals, processes, practices, and methods ? a framework for these as well as concepts

Posted on June 13, 2010
Every law department has proximal goals and distal goals. Proximal goals are to reduce legal risks of the organization, to deliver legal advice to it, to resolve legal disputes involving it, and to handle legal documents on its behalf. Those...

Unbalanced representation by regions, so far, in the largest-ever benchmark survey

Posted on June 13, 2010
According to the headquarters country they stated, I assigned each of the 455 law departments in the first release of the General Counsel Metrics benchmark report to one of seven regions. The pattern that became apparent shows lopsided participation. North...

A ?typical work flow process? for an invoice sent to a law department, but really GE?s

Posted on June 11, 2010
?A typical work flow process might include receipt of the invoice by a billing coordinator, initial automated and manual review against law department billing policies, invoice scanning and matter management system update, routing to the responsible attorney for approval, notification...

Half of a large group of legal departments in France saw budget increases in 2009

Posted on June 11, 2010
A French consultant, H�l�ne Trink, teamed with the legal search firm Equiteam to survey French legal departments. They obtained responses from 81 general counsel (Directeurs juridiques) in the fall of 2009. Surprisingly, a bit more than half of the respondents...

Sub silentio: one reason why a benchmark participant might request anonymity

Posted on June 11, 2010
My most recent column for InsideCounsel, under the nom de plume of ?Morrison on Metrics,? gave data on the number of participants in the General Counsel Metrics global benchmark survey who requested anonymity. I speculated on several reasons why they...

Survey data from French legal departments on cost reduction methods

Posted on June 11, 2010
A consultant in France, H�l�ne Trink,recently teamed with a legal search firm (Equiteam) to publish a survey of French legal departments. The survey asked questions about budgets and management of outside counsel counsel. It obtained responses from 81 general counsel...

A new cooperative effort, the Inclusion Initiative urges members to put their minority-firm money on the line

Posted on June 10, 2010
Corp. Counsel, June 2010 at 18, contains an interview of Susan Blount, the general counsel of Prudential. She explains the nascent Inclusion Initiative. The ?11 large corporations that have signed on have committed to spending a portion of their legal...

Atomic Noodle! Law department management videos with this blogger holding forth

Posted on June 10, 2010
The Internet always amazes me. To wit, a few days ago I stumbled on Atomic Noodle. It tracks online videos. Here are three of me pontificating. The ?view counts? are nothing to brag about. MH Connected Pulse interview with Rees...

Based on CEOs, do insiders promoted to GC tend to perform better and last longer?

Posted on June 10, 2010
A stimulating article in strategy+business, Summer 2010, at 80, describes research into the comparative performance of companies after CEOs are appointed from within (?insiders?) or from outside the company. ?Four out of five times, boards around the world choose insider...

A good GC advocates for the law department

Posted on June 10, 2010
David Bleich, the general counsel of Ford Motor, made many excellent points during a panel at the SuperConference. One of his statements was about how very important it is for a general counsel to be ?an advocate for the role...

Three points from a general counsel panel: crisis, curves, and counselors

Posted on June 10, 2010
An excellent panel at the SuperConference presented the top legal officers of Allstate, Ford, and P&G. Three of their comments may be old hat to veteran GCs, but they struck me as worth a mention. Discussing why all three had...

Each time you impose a new management task, should you stop one?

Posted on June 10, 2010
Much of me wants to encourage general counsel to try out something new, something that requires training and oversight, change, some amount of effort ? and every operational adjustment does. But law departments can get encrusted, overloaded, cluttered, burdened with...

Three more mindsets that help undergird alternative fee arrangements

Posted on June 09, 2010
One post begets another, so having just seen off six ways of thinking that favor alternative fees (See my post of June 2, 2010: mental models conducive to non-hourly billing.), my marginalia jottings came up with three more. Profit model...

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