I have defined a large law departments as one that has more than 20 lawyers (See my post of June 27, 2006: large law departments defined; and Aug. 26, 2006: four largest law departments in France.). The topic is, shall I say large, but I scanned my 4,600 posts and gathered those that use the term “large law department.”
To keep this post manageable, I have not included here the many references to large law departments that involve staff numbers, technology or compensation.
As compared to smaller departments, large ones can support more and different kinds of resources (See my post of March 6, 2007: obtain accreditation for CLE; March 12, 2006: maintain librarians; Aug. 27, 2005: dedicate IT staff; Sept. 10, 2005: stock specialist lawyers; May 1, 2006: run internal think tanks; July 25, 2007: explore alternative fee arrangements; March 9, 2009: come up with slush funds for investments; and May 3, 2008: create internal discovery teams.).
Only for very large law departments are some ideas discussed on this blog conceivable (See my post of Nov. 6, 2006: organizational network analysis; April 26, 2006: internal labor market analysis; June 15, 2008: seed money for technology ventures; and April 18, 2005: administrative function surveyed the legal group.).
Other posts simply comment on aspects of large law departments (See my post of June 15, 2006: managerially more innovative; July 5, 2005: scale advantages and disadvantages; June 7, 2008: use larger law firms; Feb. 7, 2008: large department, but no administrator; Aug. 31, 2005: find more value in tracking time; and July 21, 2008: internal overhead increases.).