An obituary appeared here six months ago (See my post of Sept. 4, 2006 and its view that department newsletters have dried up.). The anti-newsletter forces described in that post certainly exist, but there are not just survivors but thrivers. InsideCounsel, Sept. 2006 mentions that BMO Financial (at 65) e-mails…
One variation on this idea surfaced already with UPS, where many of its lawyers are former field personnel (See my post of Jan. 25, 2007 on “about half the department.”). Another way to align lawyers with their clients, or at least have them familiar with the others’ moccasins, is to…
An excellent example of an innovation that builds knowledge, reduces quasi-legal work by the law department, offers client training, and promotes client self-service comes from the law department of Kraft Foods. The particular example cited in InsideCounsel, Sept. 2006 at 62, applies to joint ventures. The material compiled by the…
Law departments may not like what comes back to them from a client satisfaction survey, but the unavoidable truth is that what clients believe they experience is for them reality. Justified or not, client perceptions are for law departments the hill to climb. Likewise, ratings of employees on morale surveys…
As part of the research for my book on client satisfaction for law departments I analyzed 35 surveys done by law departments. Many of them asked about the same attributes, and the ones described hereafter dominated the list. The number in parentheses indicates how many of the set included that…
There’s an unanswerable question for you. As I read about Palm Harbor Homes in Counsel to Counsel, Jan. 2007 at 14, I paused where it states that the $710 million maker of factory-built homes has no internal legal department. Instead, the company relies heavily on a local law firm for…
Audits of legal risks, or any actions by in-house lawyers that identify legal risks, ought to estimate the potential impact of the risks (See my post of May 14, 2005 about “identify, size, and match” risks.). Other steps in legal risk management (See my post of Aug. 14, 2005 with…
I believe that to best assess the value of a law department, ask its clients. They know, quietly and intuitively or vocally and explicitly, whether the lawyers help them make money and grow the business. We might refer to that meaning of “client” as the individual executives of a company.…
Clients appreciate corporate lawyers who give them a numeric sense of the likelihood of a legal event happening. Everything “might” happen, but what is “likely” to happen and how “likely,” they plead. Whenever you can do so, alleviate the uncertainty with a numeric probability. If you say that there is…
The 90-lawyer department of Aviva collects client satisfaction data by different means and at different frequencies, according to Law Dept. Quarterly, Sept.-Nov. 2006 at 45. The variations are based on the level of clients. “Clients surveys are sent out to senior management every two years, and more regularly at lower…