I have dreamed for years of being able to measure legal intensity, an objective index that shows one industry faces more legal issues than another, and by how much. The researchers of McKinsey may offer one piece (McKinsey Quarterly, 2005 No. 4 at 95). The article, on regulatory strategy, identified…
A review of “remote working,” BusinessWeek, Dec. 12, 2005 at 78, mentions figures that might give law departments some things to consider when weighing the pluses and minuses of telecommuting. (See my posts of Sept. 25, 2005 on unmet desires by lawyers to work from home, Oct.18, 2005 questioning that…
A piece by a Thomson & Knight partner states what must have seemed obvious to that person: “The in house attorney is the gatekeeper between the outside lawyers and their management.” I challenge that assumption of necessarily serving as an intermediary and watchdog. Where the in-house counsel can add knowledge…
In 2003 the American Arbitration Association (AAA), using an independent market research firm, interviewed by telephone 254 US general counsel or other senior law department lawyers. According to a summary published in the ACC Docket, July/Aug. 2004 at 93 , the respondents were asked to rank their law departments on…
Only the largest law departments can afford their own technical support, people on the legal budget who report to the department’s administrator and help maintain matter management systems, specialized databases and other legal-specific applications. Most depend on corporate IT to support even law specific applications (red-lining, document assembly, and others),…
In a 2005 McKinsey Global Survey of Business Executives, one of the questions asked how much time the executives spent per week on “e-mails, voice mails, and meetings that are not valuable.” Thirty nine percent of the executives said one half to one day a week disappeared into such valueless…
This mission statement, from materials distributed at a 2005 ACC Annual Conference session, hits all the standard buttons. The Legal Department’s mission is to efficiently and effectively administer the legal affairs of the Company by internally providing professional, timely, and useful legal advice and services, arranging and actively managing the…
A thoughtful piece by Tony Williams (Legal Week, Vol. 7, Nov. 17, 2005 at 18) comments on how often there is a disconnect between the value a client perceives from a firm’s work and the value the law firm ascribes to its work. He illustrates the point with two pyramids.…
At a conference I attended, one of the panelists extended the commonplace about hiring a lawyer. He said that an individual lawyer might be the catalyst for a retention (“We like Chris.”) , but over time, the plenary capabilities of the firm attach it like ivy on an old wall.…
In a recently-published article (Legal Times, Nov. 21, 2005) , I assembled thirty (30) different methods by which law departments can improve how they processes contracts. Later, Counsel to Counsel, Nov. 2005 at 27 laid out more methods, devised by the law department of BindView Corp. (1) “Finding that its…