A good example of a complex law department is Raytheon. Its general counsel, Jay Stephens, spoke at a Director’s Roundtable, as reported in a special supplement to the Nat’l Law J., Feb. 2007 at 3, 12. First, it is not Raytheon’s “law department” but the Office of General Counsel. With about 125 professionals in total, 75 or so of them are lawyers. There’s also an ethics organization in the office with an ethics person in each of the businesses and a vice president of ethics. The office also is home to a real estate group of lawyers, an insurance group. and an environmental health and safety group.
As to the structure of lawyers within the company, there are seven operating companies and the Washington international operation, so reporting to Stephens are the general counsel of each of those functions. At headquarters there are several assistant general counsels that handle shared service areas — transactions, litigation, labor, business services, corporate securities, and intellectual property – who may or may not report to Stephens. On the international side, Raytheon has inside counsel in the UK and is putting legal counsel into Australia. All the business counsels have a solid-line reporting to the general counsel.