I lately read an intriguing idea: report the stage at which the law department is first involved in important matters. It would be easy enough for the responsible lawyer, when setting up a new matter in a management system, to categorize the point when she first plunged into a project…
As with all in-house attorneys, patent lawyers need to be managed to help them most efficiently go about their duties. Law Department Management has accumulated quite a few posts on the range of work they do that is not adversarial (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2006: patent counsel and…
I graduated from Columbia Law School in 1978 and each year the school invites me to serve as a judge for the first-year moot court program. Twice I have done so and I plan to don the powdered wig this year. Every time an in-house lawyer contributes time to a…
The new general counsel of General Mills, Roderick Palmore, is responsible not only for the company’s legal function but also for compliance and risk management. As reported in InsideCounsel, March 2008 at 13, the three areas are not uncommon responsibilities of a US general counsel. I thought again about that…
One of the unsung software heroes in law departments is its red-lining program. Microsoft Word has a red-line capability, but specialized packages have many more capabilities. For example, many law departments I have worked with have licensed DeltaView. Given that much of the work of in-house lawyers revolves around contracts…
This is one post you might wish to email to anyone you know who cares about efficiency in a law department. The PDF consists of six articles by me on that topic. Click here to download the compilation. Download rees_morrison_articles_compilation_productivity.pdf This blog has scattered in different places several of my…
Some law departments pride themselves on handling as much legal work of their company as possible (See my post of Feb. 23, 2008: company handles most litigation in-house.). Other departments stay small and buy the services of law firms for most of their legal needs (See my post of Dec.…
The general counsel of Ford Motor, David Leitch spoke recently to a group and his remarks are published in the Nat’l L.J., Vol. 30, Jan. 28, 2008. Leitch mentions that Ford Motor has about 13,000 cases pending against it. Up those cases probably 10,000 are asbestos-related and are not particularly…
At LegalTech NY this year, Exari handed out case studies about two law departments. Dow Jones’ legal team can “deliver tailored, self-service contracts to its global sales force” as a self-service option for subscription agreements. Westpac, an Australian financial services company, uses Exari software to generate 80 percent of the…
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, in his column for Talent Mgt., Jan. 2008 and 54, points out our bias to add on initiatives. He writes “The recognition and reward systems in most enterprises are geared to acknowledge the doing of something. We get credit for doing something good. We rarely get credit…