This riveting topic no doubt keeps many general counsel awake at night. For that reason, and because of a plethora of best practices in this heatedly-debated area, I will now announce the winners. Open the envelope, please! Some law departments have an array slots, boxes or hanging file folders with…
According to Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (Penguin Books 1995) at 8, at least 80 percent of us “think of ourselves as more productive than the average worker.” The authors cite studies to support this statement. If levels of excess self-esteem like that hold true…
Lawyers in a well-oiled department write competently. Because of that somewhat tenuous link to law department management and more because I try to write well, I began a series of posts on writing tips. I produced 21 of them and drew a scattering of comments. Nevertheless, it has been months…
As a generalization, in house counsel and their law firm confreres focus on getting the work done, not on thinking about how to do it better. For example, neither side conducts post-mortems (after-matter reviews) to codify what they have learned from a recently concluded matter (See my post of Dec.…
Each of us has some kind of system to help us keep track of what we need to get done. Organization is a hallmark of productivity. 1. Lists of tasks to be done are very common (See my post of April 18, 2005 on the power of to-do lists.). 2.…
Antoine Henry de Frahan comes right out and says it: “I believe that the concept of “legal risk” is meaningless and useless.” Below are some quotes extracted from his longer post (See my posts of Nov. 15, 2005 and references cited which grapple with definitions of “legal risk”; Jan. 10,…
Having offered some thoughts on ergonomics (See my post of April 23, 2006.) and the physical layouts of law departments (See my post of June 5, 2007.), I turn on now to lighting. Talent Mgt. Mag., Vol. 13, Dec. 2007 at 12, recommends “softer illumination … [and] mixing indirect lighting…
In one law department where I consulted, there are no coffee makers. Instead, at 10ish and 3ish a cart trundles around, bell ringing, and people flock to it for their donuts and cup of joe. Other law departments have no alcove with coffee pots and creamers, but the cafeteria provides…
Most in-house lawyers who must prepare a contract simply mark up the closest version they can find on their hard-drive or shared directory. A few of them use document assembly software (See my post of March 24, 2005 on if-then, rule-based document assembly software; and June 18 2007 with two…
An excellent article in ACC Docket, Vol. 25, Dec. 2007, at 60, offers all kinds of insights into how to improve your contract processes (See my posts of Jan. 3, 2006 and Dec. 3, 2005 about my article on thirty ways to do so.). One of the co-authors, Ken Adams,…