Panelists at the Fifth General Counsel Roundtable, Dec. 6, 2007, summarized in a publication by the Economist Intelligence Unit at 13, think that some litigation is on the decline. “The pendulum has indeed shifted in favor of defendants,” and for several reasons. One is that stock market gains have been…
A paragraph about the law department of Qwest Communications, winner of Corporate Counsel’s Best Legal Department of 2008 award, intrigues me. A consultant worked closely with the legal department of Qwest for four years. “Qwest lawyers helped [the consultant] create a company, Falcon Discovery, that coordinates the company’s electronic discovery.”…
Unable to find software that met its needs, the legal department of General Motors created some customized applications. The ideas and coding must have been outstanding since Corp. Counsel, Vol. 15, June 2008 at 104, explains one of the supplemental benefits. “Their work was so innovative that GM obtained four…
One problem with matter budgets is how to have inside counsel negotiate tight budgets when they will later be judged on how closely they hit those budget numbers. Perhaps one solution is to uncouple the two efforts. The lower the budget the law firm signs off on, the better, and…
An ad disguised as an article in Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, June 2008 at 52, says that DataCert “has completed more than 130 custom integrations” of its software and has “72 Fortune 500 clients.” Assume, therefore, that DataCert has around 130 law department clients. A sidebar to the article…
“The Fortune 500 corporations spend the equivalent of one-third of shareholder profits on litigation. This cost and the associated risk are not transparent to shareholders.” Met. Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16, May 2008 at 47, blares out this staggering claim by the President of eLawForum. I decided to test the statement…
An employee, hit by a truck and brain damaged such that she requires full-time nursing, recovered $417,000 from the trucker’s company, which funds a court put in a trust to pay for her medical care. The law department of the employee’s company succeeded in getting another court to order her…
Increasingly, law departments are taking a look at offshore legal process firms. When the general counsel does that, a sotto voce fret might drift through the hallways of the department – “worry about your job!” To the extent law-related work goes overseas, that shift threatens someone’s current job. You can…
In the fall of 2006, San Francisco-based utility PG&E paid $337,296 to relocate its new general counsel. Hyun Park, from Allegheny Energy in Pennsylvania. This item, from Portfolio, June, 2008 at 36, witnesses to the high costs law departments incur – or some budget in the company incurs – when…
The following list comes from an article in Finance & Risk Mgt. Commentary, Oliver Wyman, Spring 2008 at 6. The article says that companies ought to master 16 “tools to identify and manage costs.” Several of the tools seem irrelevant to general counsel (“Marketing effectiveness,” “Collections effectiveness,” “Sales force management,”…