In-House Counsel

Some lay ?laws? that pertain to inside lawyers

By Rees Morrison

This post has honored a number of social ?laws? that have become commonplaces. One not mentioned so far is Moore?s Law, which describes in part why technology can play an important and affordable role in law department productivity. The law holds that that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits will double approximately every 18 months.

Other pronouncements labeled ?laws? have appeared among the posts on this blog. Goodhart?s Law pertains to the loss of information content once a metric becomes a target of a policy (See my post of May 25, 2008.). Pareto?s Law describes many aspects of law department metrics (See my posts of May 21, 2008: with 9 references cited.). Parkinson?s Law cynically describes cynosures (See my post of Jan. 14, 2007: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."). Zipf?s Law illustrates the fundamental presence of power-law distributions (See my post of May 27, 2007.).

And, lest we forget, Murphy?s Law often seems to be handed down by the supreme court of life. If something can go wrong with a law department effort, it will go wrong.

For those readers who would like to reverse this post, invoke Gresham?s Law, which in obiter dicta might have held that ?bad posts drive out good posts.?

Full post as published by Law Department Management on May 25, 2008 (boomark / email).