John Deere’ law department operates with a competency model, but the source of this statement, “Leading Practices in Job Titles for In-House Lawyers: What Companies are Doing” (Assoc. Corp. Counsel, Aug. 2005 at 14), offers no further details. More detail comes from Boeing’s law department, which has publicized its set…
For the first time I have seen an actual list of a law department’s core competencies, Counsel to Counsel, March 2006 at 26 (See my posts of Sept. 21, 2005 on a brand company and its legal focus and May 14, 2005 on Bain’s survey of management tools.). Philip Morris…
In a thoughtful piece by E. Leigh Dance and Deborah McMurray, “10 Things We’ve Learned from In-House Counsel in the US and Europe,” Strategies: The Journal of Legal Marketing (Oct. 1, 2003) the authors write that “Legal departments are increasingly engaging in ‘vulnerability audits.’” According to them, these audits cover…
(1) “The severance contract contains a problematic non-compete. The contract is governed by Delaware law.” (2) “The severance contract, governed by Delaware law, contains a problematic non-compete.” Sentence (1) suffers from the clunkiness of two short sentences that sing-song the same structure. Further, the writer gives the troublesome non-compete provision…
Among the arguments against allowing business unit generalist lawyers to handle litigation is that they are not practiced in the arts and they may put litigation on the back burner when the choice of how to spend time includes getting deals done. The managers and executives they support are not…
Deborah A. DeMott, in her essay, “The Discrete Roles of General Counsel,” 74 Fordham Law Review 955-981 (2005), uses this felicitous phrase, which is so true. She cites another work for this supportive quote: “Inside lawyers “recognize that their job is to give the best possible answer they can, but…
One often reads about law firms, when they represent a company broadly and over time, in terms that are anthropomorphic. “The law firm knows the client,” “the firm responded quickly,” “the firm and the law department have bonded.” Nonetheless, a firm is nothing more than a group of people. Comprehensive…
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I by the notion of legal complexity (See my posts in 2005 of June 28 and Aug. 27 on litigation complexity, May 15 on legal services complexity, and Dec. 14 on regulatory complexity.). I wish there were metrics in this field. One angle would certainly…
Software developers and linguists are coding software that will let lawyers who lack a full command of English write it fluently (Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 30, Winter 2006 at 39). Others are developing software that will turn writing into speech and vice versa. Google translates material into many languages, as I…
The 120-lawyer department at the British Broadcasting Corporation had a four-member property team. The BBC’s general counsel, Nicholas Eldred, recently decided to terminate that team, as part of a push to cut overhead. He had decided that the property group “was not a core function,” as reported in LegalWeek, Feb.…