Listening to John Lennon, my mind took a perverse turn and wondered what if general counsel in the US suddenly, all over, transformed themselves into wonderful managers. Fewer in-house counsel, I imagined, because they would be much more productive, insightful, and attuned to their clients’ needs. On the other hand,…
Cisco “recently completed a takeover in eight days (as opposed to the usual weeks or months) by putting lawyers in telepresence rooms instead of on aeroplanes.” Telepresence rooms, the Economist, Aug. 25, 2007 at 57, explains, enable attendees to feel hugely closer to attendees in the distant room than does…
A commonly discussed method to reduce costs and increase quality is to collect finished work product from law firms and make it available internally and externally. That effort sounds solid, well worth doing, but in fact usually languishes (See my post of Aug. 22, 2006: futility of collecting work product…
Delegate! Everyone hears that exhortation; most in-house lawyers find delegation hard to do well. The reputed advantages of delegation are self-evident (See my post of Nov. 7, 2007: delegation alleviates stress; Nov. 6, 2006: delegation increases efficiency; and Dec. 3, 2007: an advantage of larger law departments.) but translation of…
Every company receives subpoenas for information, often because of a law suit between parties unrelated to the company one of which wants documents. Commonly, also, there are employment-related subpoenas. Large companies can be subpoenaed other than regarding employees several times a month. Employment subpoenas for large companies can reach 20…
A legal department that encourages its members to provide pro bono services undoubtedly can find an infinite number of outlets. Perhaps a general counsel needs to set out some guidelines; perhaps it is more in the spirit of public service to let people decide how they will help others. In…
A fundamental step for companies that want to be prepared for discovery of electronic documents is to prepare what is known as a data map (See my post of April 13, 2008: law department customized data mapping software.). As explained in an article in Inside Counsel, Aug. 2008 at 44,…
Lost in debates about chargeable hours and productivity of in-house counsel is the human truth sometimes they look up from their in-box. The American, July/Aug. 2008 at 29, pulls together data from America Online and Salary.com regarding how American workers fill their time when they are not doing what they…
For managers of corporate legal functions, a sweet spot lies between what their group handles that is routine work and what is rare work. With routine work, which appears with regularity, it is possible to train and delegate and systematize. It is also possible to have law firms to do…
In early 2007, 84 general counsel of “leading multinational companies,” largely companies with headquarters in Northern Europe or the UK and Ireland, ranked the legal risks they encounter in terms of frequency (See my posts of Nov. 5, 2005: legal risk with 7 references; and March 23, 2008: risk management…