A piece in the NY Times, Feb. 2, 2011 at B11, discusses the widely varying tax rates paid by major US corporations. Here comes the laudatory sentence: “G.E. is so good at avoiding taxes that some people consider its tax department to be the best in the world, even better…
How does EADS, the global aerospace Group that manufactures the Airbus, encourage innovation among its researchers? What it does, works. As summarized in 2010 Intelligence Report & Directory Series of Leaders League at 67, EADS had 7,200 patents in its 2009 portfolio, “of which 1,100 were first registered in 2008.…
Once before I mentioned software that changes what appears online depending on the person at the keyboard (See my post of March 27, 2005: AI on intranets for clients.), and recently I read again about software that can do this. KMWorld, Feb. 2011 at 20, describes real-time site personalization. Foley…
One notion in a recent article suggests that inside lawyers, working closely with managers throughout the company, can provide significant value as evaluators of their performance. Jason Mark Anderman writes that “in-house lawyers often know which low-performing managers are incorrectly perceived as being successful, what departments have squandered resources on…
In a comment to a Ben Heineman blog post last week about how compliance officers should co-report to the general counsel and the chief financial officer, one person raised yet again the fundamental criticism that in-house lawyers, beholden for their jobs, lack independence and objectivity as compared to law firm…
In March 2007, I collected references here to accounting concepts and concerns. Since then the more recent additions number 10 (See my post of Sept. 5, 2007: compensation over $1 million; Dec. 3, 2007: cash basis and reserves and P&L; Aug. 12, 2008: options expensed; Nov. 9, 2008: deal costs…
Attorneys hold senior positions outside the legal department in many companies. I have written frequently about CEOs who have practiced law, or even been promoted from the position of general counsel (See my post of March 24, 2007: promoted general counsel with 8 references; and May 26, 2007: GCs report…
The workload of in-house patent counsel must rise, to some extent, in countries where statutes require companies to compensate their employee inventors. As laid out in an excellent supplement to the ACC Docket, Nov. 2010 at 33, those countries include such large-scale patent companies as China, Japan, Korea and Germany.…
Let’s round up six candidates that pump up total legal spending for an industry. I list them in order of declining effect as I perceive them. Heavy Regulation. The amount, complexity, flux and level of enforcement of regulations drives legal spend (See my post of Dec. 14, 2005: legal intensity…
The International Association of Contract and Commercial Management 2010 Top Terms in Negotiation reported no change from the year before in the top five contract terms most frequently negotiated: (1) limitations of liability, (2) indemnification, (3) “price/charge/price changes,” (4) intellectual property, and (5) confidential information/data protection. Of the 30 contract…