PD Villareal, Schering-Plough’s lead litigation counsel, contributed a piece on ten ways to survive litigation stress (Inside Litigation, Winter 2006 at 13). In the middle, under the heading “Edit the Editing,” he notes, quite correctly, that “none of us writes like Proust or Flaubert.” Less correctly he imposes the rule…
All law departments of more than one person are “groups,” in that their members are united in a purpose. More precisely, however, in larger departments there are often teams, committees or workgroups set up to achieve a purpose. A group to understand matter management, choose a system and install it;…
“Research shows that employees who work on different floors interact 50% less than those who work on the same floor, and the difference is even greater for those working in different buildings,” according to Gerd Gigerenzer in the Harvard Bus. Rev., Vol. 84, Feb. 2006 at 58. The drastic drop-off…
I am not endorsing this software or vendor, but the software struck me as welcome for some lawyers who have long commutes or an aural style. With MagneticTime software, in-house counsel can listen to their documents and e-mails. It converts Outlook e-mails and Word documents into MP3 files, which can…
According to Constance E. Bagley, Winning Legally: How to Use the Law to Create Value, Marshall Resources, and Manage Risks (Harv. Bus. School Press 2005) at 122, Hewlett-Packard wanted to increase its patent applications 50 to 150 percent over the two years ending October 2004 (See my post of Aug.…
These conclusions come from a survey conducted in 2004 by the General Counsel Roundtable, as summarized in Corp. Legal Times, Feb. 2005. They strike me as plausible, but hard to prove. I cannot help but wonder whether cause and effect are being confused. Do well-run legal departments tend to have…
Even for in-house counsel who must satisfy mandatory CLE requirements, budget constraints often limit the choices those lawyers have to satisfy the requirements. One law department holds the line by limiting CLE to on-line providers. Compounding the lack of funds, law department lawyers may find themselves too specialized in comparison…
Ronald McDonald, Esq. manages more than 13,000 real estate sites. The company’s real estate department keeps information about each site on a mainframe database, yet the law department’s lawyers and paralegals frequently need access to some of that information. As explained in a vendor’s marketing document (Mitratech, McDonald’s Case Study,…
The law department of McDonald’s Corp. uses its matter management system, TeamConnect from Mitratech, as a document assembly tool (Mitratech, McDonald’s Case Study, Aug. 1, 2005 at 4. The example given is technology agreements, which are “usually standard consulting agreements and work orders, with only a few variables.” The benefits…
Citing 2005LegalMetric’s January 5, 2006 press release, William Heinze, in his blog, I/P Updates, writes that “the number of new patent infringement cases in the U.S. dropped 10 percent in 2005 for the first time in ten years.” Presumably, that means the first drop in the number of such filings…