Queuing theory is a mathematical approach to the analysis of waiting times, particularly where requests for service arrive randomly. The terms and techniques of this discipline could help general counsel. This post draws on William J. Stevenson, Operations Management (McGraw-Hill, 2005, 8th Ed.) at 779. For a legal department, clients…
Large size limits team effectiveness. An article previously discussed (See my post of May 29, 2009: do general counsel matter.) cites research that “performance problems increase exponentially as team size increases.” The ideal team consists of approximately six people. Coordination and motivation drags down team effectiveness. The Harv. Bus. Rev.,…
The blog Legal Project Management, by the Managing Director (Asia) at Global Colleague, cites an article by Sanjay Bandhari, head of e-discovery at Ernst & Young. Bandhari’s article discusses the benefits of applying project management skills to electronic discovery. The article focuses on four project management (PM) skills, which he…
One of the panels at the SuperConference stressed the importance of term sheets for clients. Term sheets help clients think through what they ought to nail down regarding a transaction. Their spadework saves lawyers’ time and saves the lawyers from having to harass the clients for answers to crucial factual…
A common presumption is that in-house US lawyers put in an average 1,850 chargeable hours per year. These hours the corporate client would pay for if the corporate lawyer were with a law firm. Testing this presumption, we need to start with an accepted definition of a legitimate internal “chargeable…
If the lawyers of a law department track their time, what constitutes “chargeable time” has some degree of subjectivity (See my post of May 16, 2006: “Count time as ‘chargeable’ when you are working on any project for or requested by your client, but not if you are doing something…
What this blog defines as “descriptive metrics” are numbers that describe some aspect of the quality and quantity of work handled by a law department (See my post of Feb. 19, 2009: supervisory responsibility; Feb. 26, 2009: start of a series on such metrics; March 8, 2009: in-house lawyers; March…
Beyond the single instance noted so far here about the economist’s darling, diminishing returns (See my post of Dec. 21, 2005: additional patents obtained by a company.), many other circumstances in law departments evidence this central concept of economics (See my post of March 3, 2006: economics with 16 references;…
If you are a general counsel and want your lawyers to change some accustomed practice, such as the engrained choice of hourly billing or the disinclination to use a matter management system, what techniques serve you best? From the McKinsey Quarterly, No. 2, 2009 at 101, holistic and psychological research…
Look, give me a break! I am trying hard to be topical. A survey conducted by OfficeTeam asked 522 office workers how frequently they go into work when they are feeling sick. “Very frequently” was the response of 45 percent of those surveyed and “Somewhat frequently” by 30 percent. Hold…