An article in 2001 by Lisa Dolak, then an Associate Professor, Syracuse Univ. College of Law, discussed professionalism and in-house counsel. She states that malpractice claims against in-house counsel “may be relatively rare, but they are on the rise.” Examples at the time she wrote the article included a counterclaim…
A law department identified only as a “Fortune 500 retail company” shared some of its client training activities in Jan. 2005 materials of ACC provided at a conference organized by the ABA Section of Business Law and ACC, Nov.18, 2005 at 16. That department provides a number of types of…
It struck me, from the profiles of two general counsel who serve the US legal needs of multinationals headquartered elsewhere, that an important part of their job is helping the senior executives of their companies – based in Tokyo, Geneva, Paris, or wherever – understand our Kafkaesqe and expensive legal…
Estimates of the number of US businesses that use instant messaging (IM) range from 50 to 90 percent, with the range due to the frequency that individuals have acted on their own when no corporate IM is available. Large numbers have downloaded and are using commercial IM packages (Fin. Times,…
Resonance Partnership’s blog, commenting on my post of Nov. 21, 2005, asked, “Is Mr. Morrison suggesting that attorneys shouldn’t ask their clients for feedback for fear that they may have to live up to their client’s expectations? Or that by asking for feedback it might be implied that attorneys upon…
A leading consumer products company surveyed its 400 top executives. It asked them, among other questions, the extent to which they felt each of the staff functions added value to the company. In the one instance I know about, the law department scored the second highest on that scale. I…
It’s not as useful to get clients’ opinions on the department’s performance considered in total as it is to understand clients’ opinions about different practice groups within the department (See my post of Aug. 28, 2005 on performance and importance.). Without that specificity of ratings, such as for the IP…
An April 2002 report at page 3 by Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability about Florida’s Department of Legal Affairs, a massive department with 1,253 full-time equivalent positions and a budget exceeding $135 million, makes a useful observation about how best to drive up response rates on…
A series of studies reported in MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Fall 2005 at 5, suggest, to the degree that they are applicable to the clients of law departments, that client satisfaction surveys may raise expectations of performance in the future by the law department. The item makes the point that…
In 1998, the legal department of the University of North Carolina, called the Office of Legal Affairs, distributed 255 surveys campus wide, and got back 110 (43%) From the Office of Legal Affairs, U. of North Carolina, March 2003. The first part aimed to determine who the clients were of…