When you post documents on a legal intranet, many intranet packages can tell you how many times clients download them (See my posts of March 1, 2007 #3 about Honeywell’s legal intranet; and March 13, 2007 on mini-intranet sites.). If you track and study that data, you can find out…
Textron launched a major Six Sigma initiative in 2002. USA TODAY recently asked Textron’s CEO, Lewis Campbell, who is himself a Six Sigma green belt, about that initiative. The CEO praised the law department. Mirabile dictu! “Our legal department has been one of the most aggressive to touch Six Sigma.”…
Law departments cannot escape the slur: “You’re just a cost center.” Listen to John Lipsey, vice president, corporate counsel services, of LexisNexis: “Today’s GC has to work within the company’s economic environment and operate the law department as a cost center.” The first part of that sentence is trite, for…
Sometimes during speeches I show a slide that makes a point about behavior of partners at law firms that irritate in-house lawyers. One of the leading irritants is “being patronizing” (See my post of Oct. 30, 2006.) Yet, I often detect the same critical and superior attitude among lawyers in…
1. The best way is to do consistently good work that helps your clients achieve their goals. 2. Second, structure your law department so your commercial lawyers feel primarily responsible for a particular business unit or units (See my posts of Aug. 3, 2005 that attacks “client alignment”; March 31,…
I took notice at a recent conference when Ben Heineman, the former general counsel of General Electric, criticized law department lawyers who think in terms of their “clients.” In Heineman’s view, that term and framework tends to separate an in-house lawyer from the person the lawyer is counseling. Heineman drilled…
When Jack VanWoerkom became the new general counsel of Home Depot in the summer of 2007, one of his first obligations was to serve two weeks as a store clerk. According to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Sept. 2007 at 30, Home Depot requires its executives “to get a feel for…
A morsel from InsideCounsel, Aug. 2007, at 52, describes a practice that can help bring in-house lawyers closer to their clients. Tamara Joseph, general counsel of Mayne Pharma, makes it a practice to eat lunch with her clients. “Clients are often more relaxed over lunch and talk about business in…
When a new general counsel takes over, an argument for a formal assessment of client satisfaction within a few months is that those scores establish a baseline of satisfaction. If the general counsel intends to try to improve client satisfaction, that baseline will enable the general counsel to show better…
Buried in the back of InsideCounsel, July 2007 at 95, is a mysterious item. It explains that “law firm managing partners and law school deans nominated the winners” of the Burton Awards for “Legends In Law.” The awards program is run in association with the Library of Congress and is…