The talent literature cites as gospel that “there’s a huge gap between the business results that average employees deliver and what stars deliver,” NY Times, April 23, 2006 at C3. According to Thomas A. Davenport, Thinking for A Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers (Harvard…
One ubiquitous term in law department management circles is “productivity.” As typically used, “productivity” assumes that value results from the task. To sharpen 400 pencils in four hours may be high output level, but it is not “productive.” “Productivity” also assumes some level of commendable quality. A lawyer who proofs…
Nestled among the initial offerings by the Law Society of Scotland’s web-based training are modules on stress management and “diffusing conflict through communication.” The piece (Legal Week, July 13, 2006 at 25) that mentions these offerings amidst modules mostly on substantive legal areas made no further comment. But I will.…
Interviewed in a recent article, Met. Corp. Counsel, July 2006, at 30, the Vice President, Legal Operations Administration for Sara Lee’s legal department, declared her view of one dividing line. “The lawyers can focus on legal issues and the operations person or team can focus on business issues.” (See my…
Ever since an economist named Ronald Coase first publicized the idea, economists have recognized that companies tend to do work internally whenever doing it externally would cost more or where the transaction costs of coordinating with outside counsel are high (See my posts of Aug. 14, 2005 about the transaction…
What law department managers call knowledge, economists call non-rival goods. As explained in David Warsh, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery (Norton 2006 at xvii), economists also refer to ideas and concepts as “nonconvexities.” Non-rival goods can be employed simultaneously by any number of law…
It is a hassle for a corporate secretary’s staff to photocopy and assemble hefty board books for Board meetings and then distribute them to members of the Board. The chore is aggravating, prone to error, under deadlines, and low-level. Several software packages streamline this chore by allowing a law department…
As described in an interview of the legal manager of a Polish subsidiary of SABMiller, “this document describes how the company can assume financial liability. It consists of tables that define the type of obligation, various levels of functions and the maximum liability involved.” According to the interview, in CounseltoCounsel,…
A CounseltoCounsel, July 2006 at 7 interview of the legal manager of a Polish subsidiary of SABMiller describes that legal department’s contract handling system. The key individual is the Contract Originator (CO). “The CO works from a cover sheet submitted by the requesting manager; shares the submitted information with appropriate…
Large law departments (See my post of June 27, 2006 on relative sizes of law departments.), beneficiaries of division of labor, specialization, scale, and investment in technology, have the wind at their back. They have more lawyers and paralegals, so they can assign work that better matches a person’s skills.…