Broad categorizations of contracts may be a method to improve how we assess productivity and quality among corporate counsel. In PricewaterhouseCoopers’ View, Issue 12 at 47, the author discusses “contractual alliances,” “outsourcing,” “distribution agreements,” “virtual joint ventures,” along with four forms of so-called structural alliances. A clever chart depicts these…
Stress levels of corporate lawyers were asked about in a survey of Dutch law departments by the Dutch law firm Houthoff Buruma. As reported in the European Lawyer, Sept. 2010 at 34, the respondents fingered three main causes of pressure: “poor internal communication, colleagues’ lack of legal awareness and tight…
A clever and useful distinction for managers uses the terms exploration and exploitation as a way to describes search modes. These concepts for how to find new ideas and improvements make sense for general counsel. General counsel need to push for efficiency, which corresponds to exploiting available resources in step-by-step…
The website of Time Savvy Attorneys refers to all lawyers and notes that “Our productivity is a function of the choices we make and the approach we take to making those choices.” It then lists “seven essential practices [that] provide a powerful structure for taking control of your choices and…
Time tracking by in-house counsel as a department-wide obligation does not appeal to me, I will admit, but I feel differently about an individual lawyer who keeps a personal record of what that lawyer does. Once you recognize that you only have so much time to devote to work and…
Gaston Bilder contributed a thoughtful comment on my post about claimed innovations that in fact assemble and build on many component parts (See my post of Dec. 28, 2010: using as an illustration DuPont’s convergence.). Gaston wrote, in part: “The next step – which is also critical from my point…
Data on the deluge comes from a deputy general counsel at Suntrust Banks, Brian Edwards. Edwards is quoted in Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2010 at 53, saying “People have an average of 30,000 e-mails per year per person.” Stunned, I converted that to the daily rate in the header but then…
The Law.com website devoted to in-house counsel periodically asks short poll questions. One of them concerned what lawyers do to lessen stress on the job. The results appear in Corp. Counsel, Dec. 2010 at 86, with whatever dubious statistical validity you want to attribute to credit them. “Prepare in advance”…
The header’s question is rhetorical, I believe, even though it is one of five “business killers” seriously proposed by an article in Fortune, Dec. 6, 2010 at 71. The author tells about a CEO who “asked his assistant to take over and handle his e-mails two years ago.” The CEO…
Tips on e-mail productivity abound on this blog, yet in-house lawyers may not think of those techniques as they bear on the attorney-client privilege. A speaker at the Georgia Corporate Counsel Institute mentioned that wanton copying by clients of a lawyer on routine e-mails makes it harder later to defend…