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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

Project management software aimed specifically at e-discovery

Posted on February 08, 2010
As more legal departments bring inside the software and expertise to handle e-discovery, general counsel and their IT colleagues may want to consider work-flow management software designed for that task. KM World, Feb. 2010 at 15, mentions three offerings: iFramework...

If you can segment work to be assigned to outside counsel, you are closer to alternative fee arrangements

Posted on February 08, 2010
One of the common steps to reduce the costs of outside counsel assumes that inside lawyers can segment matters into those that deserve high-priced talent, those that have more modest demands suitable for mid-tier firms, and those that bump along...

Possible ratios of inside to outside lawyers in the US, UK and France

Posted on February 08, 2010
In 2008, the UK had approximately 130,000 lawyers according to an article in Law Bus. Rev., Winter 2009 at 54. By some estimates, the same year the US had somewhat more than a million practicing lawyers. Other estimates suggest that...

Ten most intriguing posts (Nov. 2009) from Rees Morrison?s Law Department Management Blog

Posted on February 05, 2010
I picked these out of around 95 posts in November on my blog. Click on the link to read the full post. Seven variations on rate freezes from the traditional choice of one or two years (Nov. 17, 2009) Seven...

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Not CYA, but speed sometimes justifies calling a big brand law firm

Posted on February 05, 2010
The knock on general counsel who reflexively call Prestige, Admired & Realcostly to gain cover if things go wrong goes might be called CYA Theory (See my post of Aug. 15, 2008: CYA and 6 references.). Some truth there probably...

The Legal IT Innovators Group, a UK-based organization that could interest some in-house counsel

Posted on February 05, 2010
Having just written about groups for in-house lawyers interested in operations, I ran across the UK-based Legal IT Innovators Group. Among its 40-50 members listed on the website are at least five companies. The site explains: ?We meet for a...

You are invited ? no cost ? to take part in the largest benchmarking database ever assembled for legal departments!

Posted on February 04, 2010
General Counsel Metrics, my new company, invites general counsel around the globe to participate in what will be the most in-depth analysis ever done of fundamental law department benchmarks. Hundreds of companies around the world will submit their data online,...

Public data on bankruptcy billing rates lets you assess whether the discounts you are getting are actual

Posted on February 04, 2010
When law firms apply for their fees to be paid by a bankruptcy court, they must disclose their attorney?s hourly billing rates. Those rates for 18 major US law firms are available in the Am. Lawyer, Feb. 2010 at 45,...

Three observations about Kruger Products? use of Serengeti

Posted on February 04, 2010
It is rare to find public information about costs and savings from e-billing, so I read with interest in Canadian Lawyer, Jan. 2010 at 24, about Kruger Products (formerly Scott Paper Co.). In an interview, ?the company?s legal counsel and...

Affinity groups for specialized operational interests of law departments

Posted on February 04, 2010
Many groups cater to the operational and administrative interests of in-house lawyers and their departmental colleagues. This first cut at a compilation of those groups includes a dozen that exist or may exist (and several metaposts that I have linked)...

During the past year, six articles by this blogger, collected for you to download

Posted on February 04, 2010
During the past 12 months seven articles written by me were published. One or more of them might interest you, so here I have assembled them and the posts that first announced them. 1. Three major benefits and concerns about...

Pushing past the standby of lawyers per billion of revenue

Posted on February 04, 2010
Lawyers per billion of revenue. Sounds so simple. Underneath, however, definitional and operational complexity lurks. My article last year on this ubiquitous benchmark, lawyers per billion of revenue, covers many of the nuances [Download 09-03-09 Rees Morrison Lawyers Per Billion...

As a senior lawyer, at your site visit to an LPO provider bring experienced IT and security colleagues

Posted on February 02, 2010
When you choose an offshore vendor to provide legal-related services, you shouldn?t base the decision solely on your perception of the ability of the vendor?s staff to do the work. Beyond that, cautions the European Lawyer, Issue 92, Jan. 2010...

All 420 metaposts from this blog are available on my website, ReesMorrison.com

Posted on January 29, 2010
Whenever appropriate, I add a link to a post to a metapost, a collection of six or more posts on a topic. The metapost gives a thumbnail description of each of the prior posts as well as the date of...

Five additions to the 16 initiatives to save costs on external counsel ranked by effectiveness

Posted on January 29, 2010
The Second Annual Law Department Operations Survey at 9 lists 16 initiatives that respondents, all administrators in large US legal departments, ranked by effectiveness. The list is solid. It covers techniques that any legal department can put into action to...

Do legal departments pay law firms more quickly than their companies pay other vendors?

Posted on January 29, 2010
I ran into a study that found the timing of payment to law firms varied significantly around the company and that the particular company often paid outside counsel more rapidly than it paid other vendors. Unless prompt payment discounts apply...

Frequent obstacle to alternative fees? Software and management can?t handle it?

Posted on January 28, 2010
This speculation comes from the Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 18, Jan. 2010 at 18. ?Often legal departments remain with the billable hour because their billing systems and supervisory arrangements are not positioned to deal with the perceived complexities of alternative...

Sixteen initiatives to save costs on external counsel ranked by effectiveness

Posted on January 28, 2010
The Second Annual Law Department Operations Survey at 9 lists 16 initiatives that respondents, all administrators in large US legal departments, ranked by effectiveness. At the top, selected by seven out of ten of the operations managers who took part,...

Offshoring legal services from London to Israel, although it might be hard to tell

Posted on January 28, 2010
A firm in England, with all the outward trappings of what in the United States would be a white-shoe law firm (elite office location, phone number, resumes, spiffy website) and regulated as a law firm, actually bases nearly all its...

Administrators can only go so far with some initiatives to save costs on external counsel

Posted on January 28, 2010
Several cost-reduction techniques ranked in a recent survey rely on in-house lawyers, more so than administrators, to make them happen. In fact, the top rated one requires much more of lawyers than of operations managers, ?Use less expensive attorneys (i...

My recent profundities on characteristics of metrics used by general counsel

Posted on January 28, 2010
The National Law Journal just published my deliberations on the eight categories of metrics that confront general counsel. I wrote about them in the order of how commonly those metrics come to the fore and then continued with seven deeper...

A fixed fee with Hewlett-Packard to handle employment, property, and medium-sized litigation

Posted on January 26, 2010
A British firm, Shoosmiths, has an ?umbrella? arrangement with Hewlett-Packard, as reported by the Financial Times report, ?Innovative Lawyers 2009,? dated Oct. 23, 2009 at 36. The report discloses neither the amount nor the time period of the deal. The...

I?d like to meet you at the Bloggers Breakfast at LegalTech NYC at 9AM on Feb. 3rd

Posted on January 26, 2010
On Tuesday, February 3rd, I will attend the Bloggers Breakfast that starts at 9AM, sponsored by ALM in the Petite Trianon. The Breakfast (a three-year tradition) gives bloggers and others a chance to shake hands and chat and it would...

Checklists, practical tools with enormous (under-used) benefit for lawyers

Posted on January 26, 2010
A recent book extols checklists as a commonsense way to help us manage the complexity of our activities. A reviewer, writing in the NY Times Bk. Rev., Jan. 24, 2010 at 7, says that the author argues that in many...

Once again, courtesy of Mitratech a no-cost download of my blog book on outside counsel management

Posted on January 26, 2010
The legal world might not quite be ready for ?blooks? ? books made up of organized and annotated blog postings. Even so, scores of readers of this blog have visited the Mitratech website to get my blook on outside counsel...

Unsurprising but hard to believe: administrators say how much they save their departments

Posted on January 25, 2010
Talk about a risk of bias in survey data! A survey by administrators asked a group of law department operations managers in US legal departments ?How much do you think your company?s legal spend would increase without a legal department...

A handy distinction between fixed fees and flat fees (plus unit fees)

Posted on January 25, 2010
Researchers from the General Counsel Roundtable on outside counsel management practices defined these two terms in a sensible way, and this blogger will adopt the definitions. A fixed fee is an amount a law department agrees to pay a law...

Alternative fee arrangements lead the way in ROI according to research, especially fixed fees

Posted on January 25, 2010
A presenter at a December conference cited research from the General Counsel Roundtable on outside counsel management practices. The GCR found that ?seven of the top ten ... practices with the highest return on investment were alternative fee arrangements...

Rees Morrison?s Morsels #130 ? posts longa, morsels breva

Posted on January 25, 2010
An early and focused in-house litigation lawyer (Chanel 1928). According to a review in the London Rev. of Books, Jan. 7, 2010 at 33, early in her business career the legendary Coco Chanel struck what she felt was a terrible...

A metapost on law firms retained in foreign countries

Posted on January 25, 2010
Many times I have referred to in-house attorneys in one country retaining law firms in another country. Several posts consider the challenges of doing that (See my post of Jan. 4, 2006: advice regarding cross-border firms; Jan. 4, 2006: foreign...

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