At different sizes and times, founders and executives of companies conclude that they need an employee lawyer. Before that point, they hire law firms as they see fit, sometimes relying on one particular firm as their outside general counsel. Daniel J. Alexander II, a lawyer in Tustin, CA, fills an…
Having hosted for more than a year discussion groups on LinkedIn about law department management and on Legal OnRamp about legal department operations, I can attest that very few in-house attorneys either start topics or comment on topics. Most of the traffic comes from the host (that would be me)…
I relish surveys and analyzing their methodology and findings (See my post of March 2, 2008: surveys of law departments with 72 references.). The most prolific survey for law department management data from this blogger’s perspective is certainly that of Serengeti Law, so I thought some public praise is well…
A previous post offers 13 techniques to improve your performance if you moderate a panel (See my post of May 22, 2009: moderator methodology.). As I kept thinking about the topic, images popped into my head of moderator headaches. So, here are some bad situations to try to avoid. Imbalance…
Rather than ask lawyers and paralegals to crank out deadly-dull postmortems, suggest that they write “human stories that people can connect with.” This idea comes from the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, May 2009 at 23 and the experience of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC). If you…
HSBC Holdings, the huge, global bank, has something like 650 in-house lawyers (See my post of March 17, 2006: HSBC’s decentralized reporting.). In addition to its other management initiatives chronicled on this blog (See my post of April 13, 2008: offshore legal support center; July 27, 2008 #3: 50 secondees…
My brother earned his PhD from Harvard Business School, where his professors often emphasized that business research could be “true, useful, or generalizeable,” but rarely all three at once. I feel the same about my blog posts and much that is bruited about regarding law department management. Some examples: It…
For inside counsel, nothing is certain but death, taxes and retirement – and general counsel certainly know that many of their lawyers will retire from the department some day (See my post of Dec. 19, 2005: “contented” attorneys in-house face the specter of retirement; Sept. 4, 2005: demographic forces; and…
A recent article describes six “search technologies,” each of which can help a law department’s members find useful material stored on drives, intranets, or databases. The ABA J., Vol. 95, April 2009 at 43, focuses on litigation support rather than knowledge management, but it discusses these ways to search through…
This post is part of a series sponsored by Martindale-Hubbell Connected. Please see tomorrow’s post on Sean Doherty’s blog, and all the subsequent posts in the series. A couple of recommendations I would make for lawyers who are new to online professional networks are to concentrate on one or two…