A number of previous posts have discussed Six Sigma (See my post of May 3, 2006 #2 and references cited.). According to General Electric and a piece on it in Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Jan. 2007 at 61, Six Sigma focuses on consistency in processes. A variation of Six Sigma…
Top-posters reply to a message above the original text; bottom-posters, the opposite. Interleavers reply within the original text; while copiers pick out what they want to reply to and copy it above their response. Law departments may become accustomed to one style or another, usually one that is in accord…
When lawyers make judgments under uncertainty, they can make two general types of errors — false positives (Type I errors) and false negatives (Type II errors). A false positive claims to find something that isn’t there, such as deliberate manipulation of option pricing when actually only sloppiness was at fault.…
During a recent conference, I learned of a law department that uses software called Omniware. As described by a senior lawyer in that department, this contract management database tracks the status of contracts, assembles first drafts of common contracts, aggregates knowledge about bulk purchases, and has a suite of reporting…
I have speculated several times about why it is that the larger the company the lower the total legal spend as a percentage of revenue. Candidates to explain this established metric in favor of larger departments include greater specialization of lawyers; more investments in technology; the services of better law…
A smidgeon of data would go a long way to help us understand whether lawyers should create their own documents or dictate the first draft. The clarity and resounding persuasiveness of “it depends” just doesn’t answer the question. Nor does a survey of law firms in October 2005 by the…
According to Law Dept. Quarterly, Sept.-Nov. 2006 at 45, for a full-time lawyer in the Aviva legal team the “ideal” would be “1320 hours of chargeable time a year.” Mary Ward, the head of legal operations for the 90 lawyer group, observes that “actual figures are frequently higher.” Indeed. The…
Each year the legal team at Carrillion, the $8 billion UK building company, hosts a “legal network meeting.” Attending it are the 20-some in-house lawyers, the company’sw main external advisers, and senior internal clients — in all around 160 people. “Its purpose is to cover issues highlighting what the business…
On the legal team of Carillion, an $8 billion British infrastructure, building and business services company, many of its lawyers who advise business units sit physically with the unit. According to Richard Tapp, group company secretary and general counsel, in an interview in Law Dept. Quarterly, Vol. 2, Sept. /Nov.…
I avidly read Lucy Kellaway (Fin. Times), so when her headline mentioned “cyber-skiving” I had to research the term. Skive is British slang for avoiding work by staying away or leaving early; it’s often heard in the form skive off. The term may have appeared in World War I when…