Winner of Corporate Counsel’s Best Legal Department of 2008 award, the law department of Qwest Communications leaves us with a good example of a general counsel who pushed for a benefit to his team. As explained in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 96, Rich Baer lobbied successfully for an exception to the company’s policy against in-place promotions and salary increases.
The ability to bestow those promotions and pay bumps, presumably without a change in title, helped him reduce the department’s attrition rate. Others could explore obtaining a similar privilege (See my post of Oct. 6, 2006: GC should visibly promote and defend the department’s lawyers.).