The Economist, Dec. 17, 2011 at 116, discusses the well-worn arguments regarding relative innovativeness between bigger and smaller companies. The editorial adds two points: (1) larger companies excel more at incremental improvements than radical change and (2) the growth rates of companies correlate more with innovation than do their size.…
A recent announcement described a capability that I hadn’t heard about. Handshake Software, a provider of SharePoint-based intranets, extranets, search, document and mail management, and Vizit, a provider of content visualization and social collaboration software for SharePoint, announced a technology alliance. It was what Vizit brings to the alliance that…
The group has grown steadily, and last week welcomed member number one thousand. Along with the steady increase in participant numbers has come an increase in the flow of discussions and comments. Anyone who belongs to LinkedIn and who cares about the effective management of inside counsel and their teams…
In 2005, a group of in-house counsel coalesced, all women, all the top intellectual property lawyers in their respective companies. They cleverly called themselves Chipsters – CHiefIP lawyers – and they have continued to meet. The lawyers worked or still work at such IP powerhouses as Apple, Alta, Cadence Design…
This blog has acknowledged a handful of maturity models that pertain to law departments (See my post of May 15, 2009: for compliance; May 12, 2010: for attention to intellectual property; May 12, 2010: for legal departments overall; Aug. 10, 2011: for outside counsel management; and Aug. 10, 2011: for…
A collection of international laws is available on vLex. Along the lines of Justia’s offering, vLex appears to me from wandering around on its website to be very impressive. In the banner it boasts “43,505 customers, 62,590,371 documents (actually, I counted 62,590,369 but I may have lost track somewhere), 1,024…
A general counsel who subscribes pointed me to Knowledge Mosaic. Its website proclaims that subscribers can search more than 90,000 memos from law firms covering 46 different practice areas. If true, that is an astounding collection of legal guidance and interpretation available on the Internet, albeit for a subscription fee.…
Chaos theory studies phenomenon where small changes in the initial conditions result in major changes in consequences (a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil famously results in a hurricane off Bermuda). As used for physical systems, chaos events are non-linear: they are not wildly unpredictable and mysterious – the popular…
LinkedIn membership costs nothing, but the vast professional online site can provide significant value. Groups abound and you can look up people and often find more about them and how to reach them. Almost two months ago I started a LinkedIn group (Law Department Administrators) for administrators in legal departments…
Part of Pfizer’s arrangements with its Alliance firms are evaluations of those firms. According to the ACC Docket, July/Aug. 2011 at 80, Pfizer lawyers are supposed to go online to complete evaluation forms, which include an opportunity to write in comments. In my experience, evaluations by in-house lawyers of their…