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

Ranking in a survey of the six most common targets for saving during 2009

Posted on May 31, 2010
Data collected by the General Counsel Roundtable reveals where its members cut costs in 2009. The top six reductions, based on responses from 124 departments, were law firm expenditures (70%), travel (59%), vendors and consultants (21%), IT spend (14%), law...

Assessments of legal departments by the law firms that represent them

Posted on May 31, 2010
Speaking on a panel at the SuperConference, Steve Williams of the General Counsel Roundtable displayed a dashboard for legal departments. One of the items on it was scores by law firms from evaluations they complete on the department. Law firms...

Comparative data across countries in Europe from new benchmark study

Posted on May 31, 2010
Of the 455 legal departments in the first release of the General Counsel Metrics LLC study, 41 are based in France, Germany, Italy, or the United Kingdom. The total internal plus external legal expenses reported by those companies divided by...

A benchmark consequence if revenue falls faster than total legal spend

Posted on May 28, 2010
It would not surprise me that for many US companies, revenue plummeted during 2009 at a faster rate than total legal spending. Customers can decide not to buy faster than general counsel can terminate staff or reduce outside counsel spend....

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

Survey: why law departments don?t track more data on outside counsel spend and matters

Posted on May 28, 2010
On a panel at the SuperConference, Steve Williams of the General Counsel Roundtable shared the results of a survey of its members regarding ?why law departments shy away from data.? More precisely, why they don?t do as much as they...

Shout out to Pinhawk and its readers who come to this site

Posted on May 28, 2010
Thirty years ago on a MetroNorth platform in Scarsdale, NY, I met Joe Bookman, then the President of CompInfo. Soon thereafter, disgruntled with law practice and enamored of PCs and software for lawyers, I joined CompInfo to sell its LawPack...

Eighth set of blogs that have referred readers to LawDepartmentManagementBlog

Posted on May 28, 2010
Another in my series of kudos, thanks and gratitude (See my post of Nov. 15, 2009: history of this series; and Jan. 4, 2010: seventh set.). 1. BrightLeaf 2. Entertainment Litigation (Hank Fasthoff) 3. Globallegal (Matthew Sullivan) 4. Jasonschoolmeester...

My article on bidders? conference calls during competitive selection processes

Posted on May 28, 2010
Where there are Requests for Proposals there should be bidders? conference calls. Yes, they should be a best practice (See my post of March 18, 2007: basics of teleconferences for bidders; May 21, 2007: auctions and call-ins; Nov. 30, 2007:...

Respondents to the largest-ever benchmark study are 63% general counsel, 16% direct reports, and 8% COOs

Posted on May 26, 2010
Of the 564 people who submitted data for the largest benchmarking survey ever, almost two thirds of them (63%) are general counsel. The next largest group of respondents is lawyers who report directly to the general counsel (16%). The third...

Could lack of alternative fee arrangements (AFA) breach a fiduciary duty owed by a general counsel?

Posted on May 26, 2010
Jeff Carr, the general counsel of FMC Technologies, held forth on a panel at the SuperConference yesterday. In the context of billing arrangements by law firms other than hourly billing (and discounted hourly rates), Carr speculated out loud. He wondered...

Indefatigable doesn?t mean skinny: new ventures in the past year of this blog

Posted on May 26, 2010
Let?s see, what have I done differently on this blog in the past year or so? Three changes particularly stand out. First is the distribution of my posts on Twitter through TweetDeck. I now have hits on this blog from...

Pfizer, the pharma giant, also makes the news as a law department

Posted on May 26, 2010
Almost as ubiquitous as little blue pills are posts on this blog about the world?s largest pharmaceutical company. Here they are about Pfizer in chronological order (See my post of Oct.1, 2005: Laura Kibbe and internal discovery team; Feb. 14,...

Heterogeneity of a general counsel?s direct reports may degrade a team?s performance

Posted on May 26, 2010
Those who report to a general counsel in large law departments differ from each other on such demographic characteristics as age, gender, race, religion, department tenure, education, and work background. ?A team?s demographic heterogeneity, assessed using a variety of indexes,...

Does the metabolism of change decline the longer a general counsel serves?

Posted on May 25, 2010
No one knows. But academic management literature doesn?t lack for models, theories and research. ?The conventional argument, primarily drawn from upper echelons theory, is that long-tenured executives are a source of organizational complacency. That is, they tend to resist change...

Response rate terminology for benchmark and other surveys

Posted on May 25, 2010
A survey has a response rate, which is the percentage of surveys returned or taken out of the total population invited to respond. Let?s say a trade group sent a survey to 200 general counsel and 80 took the survey....

Not speaking truth to power comes more from futility than fear

Posted on May 25, 2010
General counsel usually say things like ?My lawyers tell me what they think. We have candid and open conversations in private and during staff meetings.? Maybe. I have always felt that subordinates do not point out that the top lawyer...

The silent majority of general counsel ? it?s completely dark out there about what most legal departments are doing

Posted on May 25, 2010
A few general counsel relish the klieg lights of panels, quotes, and profiles, but the other 99 percent go about their business without leaving a trace for others to learn. Publicity trails a handful of spokes-GCs, and I have written...

Welcome to a new GC blogger, Richard Russeth!

Posted on May 25, 2010
Through his invitation to connect with me on LinkedIn I met Richard Russeth, the general counsel of a $2 billion, privately held company, Leprino Foods. His blog just got underway but it looks good, has neat features, and his first...

Hyperpost on innovation and creativity ? six metaposts on originality

Posted on May 25, 2010
With my most recent collection of posts about novel approaches to management issues, I have reached the point where my metaposts deserve to be pulled together into a hyperpost. Well-run legal departments constantly change for the better, even though the...

Law departments of private Chinese companies reported to have little respect

Posted on May 24, 2010
Baidu, the Internet colossus of China, boasts a team of 16 corporate lawyers, including two in Japan, who counsel the $625 million revenue company. An article in Corp. Counsel, May 2010 at 68, includes these facts in its profile of...

When you add co-general counsel, management troubles are likely to multiply

Posted on May 24, 2010
Corp. Counsel, May 2010 at 25, mentions in passing that Mitchell Zamoff is the ?co-general counsel of United-Health Group.? Before, I have wondered how twin GCs parcel out decision-making and avoid competition (See my post of June 16, 2007: co-general...

It might be appropriate to normalize spend for law departments in different countries by their respective country?s tort costs

Posted on May 24, 2010
?In 2003 tort costs were equivalent to 2.2% of American GDP, compared with 1.7% in Italy, 1.1% in Germany and less than 1% in Japan, France and Britain.? The article in the Economist, May 22, 2010, at 68, doesn?t explain...

An update on posts about innovation and creativity in legal departments

Posted on May 24, 2010
What?s new and shiny catches my eye, even though I believe that tortoise-like incremental improvements hold more promise for legal departments than do hare-racing radical changes. I also believe that opportunities to do something new, even if small potatoes, surround...

Save on services: average renewal by a vendor offers a discount of 4 to 6 percent

Posted on May 24, 2010
An article in Law Practice, May/June 2010 at 18, describes six ways a legal department might squeeze some savings out of its support services. As examples of support services, think of legal research, subscription management, trademark renewals, bulk photocopying, shredding,...

What is the difference between anonymous and confidential survey responses?

Posted on May 24, 2010
For purposes of surveys, it is helpful to define the terms "anonymous" and "confidential." Anonymous means not identified by name. Confidential means private, secret, not universally available or known only to a select few. With a benchmark survey, for example,...

Retweets from this blog on Twitter, a snapshot from one day, and the power of the Internet to circulate management ideas

Posted on May 24, 2010
Having read about Collecta.com in Lawtech@alm.com, I searched on it for ?law benchmarks?. Instantly the site showed me results for the last three days: blog and Twitter entries plus four retweets of my recent post on the 455 law departments...

The benefits of checking references before personnel interviews begin

Posted on May 24, 2010
talent mgt., May 2010 at 44, describes how GlaxoSmithKline tested a novel approach to assessing job candidates. They piloted a method that used a Web-based tool to analyze references before the decisive interviews of new hires, including lawyers. Once the...

Part XLVII of a collection of embedded metaposts

Posted on May 24, 2010
Embedded metaposts, ten more of them, as well as their census of back references (See my post of April 21, 2010: Part XLVI), plus their back references. 1. Artificial intelligence (See my post of April 21, 2010: AI and legal...

Learn from the 455 law departments in the first edition of the global benchmark report

Posted on May 20, 2010
You can get your first edition of the 60-page global benchmarking report from General Counsel Metrics, LLC, if you click here to submit your data or click on the display in the upper right corner. The first release ? followed...

Ten most stimulating posts of March 2010, IMHO

Posted on May 20, 2010
GCs who report to the CEO are paid more, and a few thoughts on reasons why (March 2, 2010) It could be that they report to someone lower than the CEO, with a lower compensation ceiling. Or they are less...

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...