Earlier I fingered the chief culprit that preserves the status quo, the single most flagrant obstacle to improvement in law department operations: a refusal to stop and think about how work is done (See my post of July 11, 2011: pause and reflect.). If an internal lawyer does that, ten…
Galileo was forced to recant, but famously muttered the truth. Though often pushed to use other people’s words or to talk about best practices, my protests still echo. Even with my skepticism as expressed on this blog, from time to I refer to some practices as best (See my post…
A major US insurance company headquartered in Boston has nearly 700 lawyers in 63 field legal offices. Of them, about 120 use WinScribe’s OnDemand “cloud based” digital dictation workflow technology. One out of five is impressive penetration of the productivity tool. I have not seen any other data on even…
What blocks lawyers in legal departments if they want to streamline how their department’s work gets done? It’s not lack of funds, management intransigence, lack of creativity or ideas. Assuming they would like to increase productivity, it’s not the crush of work, the lack of rewards, risk aversion, or barriers…
A few days ago I had the privilege of speaking during an Exari webinar on contracts and risk management. I discussed a dozen practices that some law departments follow regarding contract management and risk mitigation. If you click on this you can register to hear the recording of the session…
With a rash of recent metaposts on contracts and how they are managed internally, I thought I should pull together a hyperpost. Here are 12 metaposts – collections of six or more blog posts on a topic – I have assembled, including two on document assembly. Contracts, see document assembly…
When an industry standard is established for some technology, as for example smartphones rely on several industry standards, those patents that are deemed “essential” for the standard become subject to different rules. The company that owns an essential patent may be required to license it on a fair and reasonable…
Software to help handle contracts – recent references [metapost contract software II 12] The ubiquity of commercial contract work in legal departments matches the prolixity of software that can help. I have previously collected posts about technology and contracts, but more have accumulated since then (See my post of Nov.…
In the May 2011 Harvard Business Review, one article (at 85) argues that the biggest roadblock to work productivity is that “People don’t capture stuff that has their attention.” They commit to do something, “but they don’t write it down and it goes into a black hole.” Worse, they don’t…
Law departments institute many practices to handle the torrent of contract review, drafting and negotiation. In the past 18 months or so, this blog has cited nearly two dozen practices that deserve consideration. For several references I have cited the company that was the source of the practice (See my…