Here are 30 suggestions for how you and your colleagues can use e-mail more carefully and cope with the rising tide of it more effectively. Train members of the department on e-mail effectiveness (See my post of July 20, 2007: Capital One.). When you start to type the name of…
A recent post here pointed out that advice to take five or ten minutes to stress test an important email would necessarily reduce productivity (See my post of Aug. 19, 2009: 5-10 minute rule for email.). A fellow blogger, Mary Abraham, who writes about knowledge management and lawyers on her…
It seems perverse to slow down an in-house attorney who is deluged with email, but that is what authors in Robert Haig, Ed., Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel(Thomson Reuters/West 2009 Supp.), Vol. 1, Chapter 2 at §2:18, recommends. For important messages, write co-authors Charles Gill, Joseph Santos and…
By guest author Steven Levy There is increasing evidence that having dual monitors generates huge productivity gains. If you have a laptop, you’re already set for dual monitors. You’ve got your new widescreen beauty; your laptop screen becomes the second monitor. For many Windows laptops, simply attaching the new monitor…
Law Department Management Blog welcomes guest blogger Steven Levy. For a number of years, Steven was the Senior Director, Information Systems Department, Microsoft Legal and Corporate Affairs. You can dramatically improve your computer-time productivity with a simple – and increasingly inexpensive – device. Of course, you may have to beg…
Included in this overview are metaposts and comments that have to do with process improvement. It includes two metaposts on Six Sigma, as well as one each on process mapping, kaizen and cycle time (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma with 18 references; July 24, 2009: Six…
The authors of a chapter in Laura Empson, ed., Managing The Modern Law Firm: New Challenges New Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press 2007) at 104, wanted to operationalize quality for the law firms they were studying. To operationalize is to devise a metric that represents some soft attribute (See my post…
A recent post invited readers to send me examples of good management. Dan Williams at T-Mobile obliged, and I thank him. He gave me permission to quote and cite him. “I have an example that has stuck with me throughout my career. My first general counsel wouldn’t even entertain a…
Groupthink: Group members can collectively – and often unconsciously – pressure dissidents to agree to a position the majority favors. According to James Dunning’s recent comment “’Groupthink,’ as it is known in less eminent circles, can literally be lethal – the Columbia space shuttle disaster but one awful example. Dunning…
The cliché “doing more with less” implies spending more time on work that benefits clients, less on things that help the legal department run, i.e., administrative tasks. Whatever detracts from client service has lower value (See my post of May 20, 2009: estimates of non-chargeable time; Oct. 30, 2005: in-house…