The Scientific Atlanta legal department includes 30 people, its general counsel Michael Veysey said in an article interview: 14 attorneys, seven contract managers and legal assistants. According to reporter Katheryn Hayes Tucker, of the Fulton County Daily Report, July 23, 2007, some of the contract managers are lawyers, some are…
No lawyer wants to confess that some of what he or she does is make-work, not worthy of that person’s experience and cost. If asked directly to disclose their low-value activities — and everybody has some of it — they hedge and fudge and protect themselves. To sidestep this difficulty,…
The best way to train in-house counsel on software applications is not to run a single, long, intensive session once the system is ready, and then let them go thereafter. Rapid exposure leads to rapid decay; the deluge of knowledge runs off and does not soak in. Usually, after a…
Unlike much of the work that comes to a law department, the patent group has considerable influence over its own workload. I thought about this unusual aspect in the midst of reactivity when I read that “Hitachi Ltd. has boosted profits by pruning its patents. It scaled back its number…
Wired, Aug. 2007 at 56, urges people in charge of meetings to consider a half-dozen ways to improve them. (1) Don’t have a meeting at all. Perhaps the law department can settle the issues by e-mail or phone or in the informal one-on-one chats. (2) Prepare a clear agenda. For…
Many in-house counsel procrastinate when it’s time to do some administrative tasks that they dislike, such as to submit timesheets, review invoices, complete evaluation forms, or enter status updates into matter management systems. Prodded by an e-mail alert, they can ignore it amidst the flood of other emails. Pop-ups on…
General Counsel ought to feel completely free to call or speak, directly, with any lawyer the department, regardless of level. Doing so, however may upset the boss of a lower-level lawyer who is called. Skipping a level can make that person feel that they are being gone around, disrespected, or…
One way to cope with more work despite having the same number or fewer staff is to take more legal risks. The contract that you only review for key elements harbors more legal risks than the completely-reviewed one. The contracts below a certain amount that you don’t even look at…
A sticky point in many law department situations is whether a lawyer should make a decision on his or her own or first check with the general counsel. The nature of a hierarchical organization pushes people to protect themselves from later criticism; they run too many things by the boss.…
William Shull, chief patent counsel at Halliburton Energy Services Inc., believes that cash awards encourage inventors to bring forward their patentable ideas (See my posts of Oct. 20, 2006 on Dial’s incentive program; and Jan. 27, 2006 on options granted as rewards for patents.). Shull spoke to a panel at…