During a recent consulting project, I interviewed a lawyer who spends much of his time on sales agreements. “Sometimes I spend more time tussling with my sales force over terms than I do with the other side,” he said. This complaint goes back to a point made previously – business…
Until recently, an easy recommendation to a law department said to simplify the gaggle of contracts they dealt with both in number and in content. With some experience, however, it has become clear that lawyers on their own can only go so far to clean up contractual language. They can’t…
Portugal’s largest retailer, Jerónimo Martins, had three lawyers in 1999, when its current Head of Legal, António Alves, joined. In the decade that followed, he has built the department significantly. He currently has two lawyers reporting to him directly at the Group holding level “and 10 more reporting functionally in…
Steven Levy commented on my post about metrics that might quantify the complexity of contracts (See my post of Oct. 31, 2010: Halstead metrics translated to law departments.). The problem is that Halstead metrics measure code complexity (sort of) but do not measure either problem complexity, solution elegance (maintainability and…
The Admin. Sciences Quarterly, June 2003 at 311, reviewed a book called The Company Doctor: Risk, Responsibilities, and Corporate Professionalism (by Elaine Draper). The author interviewed more than 100 professionals engaged as or working with physicians in large corporations “whose primary economic activity is not related to health care.” It…
When a legal department goes hat in hand for a budget increase, having paid more than was projected that year for, say, outside counsel, clients accumulate and confirm stereotypes. Invidious beliefs about lawyers (to some degree, but not entirely, urban legend myths) find reinforcement. Here are some of those myths,…
Even strenuous efforts to “team” with clients, to be “business partners” and to “align” may all lead to disappointed in-house legal departments. At bottom, clients may grudgingly appreciate that their lawyers guide them through the legal thickets, but more fundamentally those clients wish for grassy leas – no legal issues…
It should be irrefragable that business executives do not retain outside counsel on their own. With rare exceptions, such as the CEO once in a long while or a Board committee, the legal department should be the sole arbiter of when to go outside and to which firm as well…
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, “insists on full allocation of overhead – everything from legal to marketing expenses – to the parts of the business that use them.” I favor that discipline: the legal department should allocate its internal (and external) costs to the general ledger account of…
Consider these reasons why clients might criticize the speed of their legal team. The in-house lawyers might be not very capable. They lack training, draw on inadequate experience, or make do with feeble intelligence The law department might be understaffed to handle even a normal flow of client requests for…