The law department of BAE Systems, with its 120 lawyers, enjoys the efforts of a head of knowledge management and training (See my post of Sept. 10, 2005: specialized roles in law departments.). According to Legal Week, July 31, 2008, among her other activities, Jo Humphrey has developed an Internet-based…
Talent Mgt. Mag., July 2007 at 44, discusses strengths and limitations of ten techniques to elicit and exchange knowledge. The first technique on the list is “subject-matter expert interviews.” Although I have not heard of a law department that conducts such interviews, they certainly make sense to me (See my…
A 2007 survey by the Association of Corporate Counsel, reported in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 61, drew responses from 1,166 general counsel. When asked what initiatives outside counsel could implement to improve the relationship with their legal department, respondents ranked at the top a set of…
The technology is cheap and easy that allows in-house lawyers to record lessons they have learned during the day. For example, PDA’s let you save your comments at any time on what you just took away from a negotiation, or from a law review article, or from a meeting with…
Aside from being a fountain of youth (See my post of April 27, 2006: Continuing Legal Education may help lawyers live longer.), Continuing Legal Education for attorneys who work in law departments ought to have great value (See my post of Dec. 19, 2005: think of law departments in terms…
A post by David Hobbie about an International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) session on Aug. 22, 2007, describes some of the knowledge management initiatives of Cisco’s Law Department. Cisco has 130 lawyers in the Silicon Valley and 230 total legal staff in 72 countries. They use DealBuilder (See my post…
Alternate reality games (ARGs) are immersive, massively multiplayer experiences that unfold for the participants over days, weeks or months (See my post of Nov. 18, 2007: online gaming worlds as a way to train in-house counsel.). As described in the Harv. Bus. Rev., Vol. 86, at 29, an ARG designer,…
Joe Bookman, the founder of PinHawk, offers an intriguing prediction in Law Tech. News, Feb. 2008, at 30. Bookman foresees that over the next year or so law-department matter-management systems will start to integrate with internet monitoring software. For example, when an in-house lawyer clicks on a matter, the monitoring…
My friend Paul Lippe, head of Legal OnRamp, makes an interesting point. It is not enough for a general counsel to know the legal ins and outs of a situation. Nor is it enough to also know the situation’s business ramifications. What the general counsel must also know is what…
Forty attorneys took part in the most recent Association of Corporate Counsel’s (ACC) Executive Leadership Institute (ELI). Lectures by Stephen R. Chitwood, director of George Washington University’s Center for Law Practice Strategy and Management, focused on “executive leadership and management, motivation, strategic thinking, planning, analysis, and management, leadership style; and…