OpRisk & Compliance, Vol. 10, April 2009 at 29, makes the point that risk management is not like compliance and it is not like audit. One person interviewed for the article offered this view: “The other two [compliance and audit] are about policing. They are about looking backwards and ticking…
By guest author Jeffrey M. Kaplan How would your compliance and ethics (C&E) program fare if evaluated under the Department of Justice’s corporate criminal charging standards or the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations? This one-minute self test – based on applicable legal standards, best practices and lessons learned from major…
Whirlpool “has more than $4 billion of new ideas in its innovation pipeline,” according to an article in talent mgt., Feb. 2009 at 46. The rest of the article looks mostly at how the company has fused technology and talent management, but my thought was “This is certainly one way…
Four stages to describe the contributions of internal and external counsel make up the heart of a recent report: the legal value chain. The Executive Summary for “Leading the Way to Value in Legal Services,” a 35-page thought piece from Global Leaders in Law (See my post of Dec. 2,…
“Value from external advisers can be dependent on the quality of instruction from General Counsel.” I agree with this quote from the Executive Summary for “Leading the Way to Value in Legal Services,” a recent report issued by Global Leaders in Law (See my post of Dec. 2, 2008: formation…
A large legal department has claimed savings of tens of millions in a year by an interesting calculation. The calculation starts with the total hours billed to clients by the department’s timekeepers (both lawyers and paralegals). [Yes, the department makes its professionals track their time and charge it to clients.]…
Some 240 general counsel responded to a survey conducted by FTI Consulting, the results of which are in Corp. Bd. Mbr., Vol. 12, 2nd Quarter 2009 at 50. When asked what area of risk their company most needs to work on, 45 percent of the general counsel picked “Understanding operational…
“The role of in-house lawyers has generally been less pronounced in large Asian corporations than their American and European counterparts. Relatively few companies have full fledged General Counsel, with the top legal role frequently filled by a vice president or director instead of a senior-level executive.” Corp. Counsel, Vol. 16,…
To the degree that law departments and law firms were to publicize their fixed fees for handling broad ranges of matters, such as “$500,000 a year for all employment-related adversarial relations,” in-house counsel will be better able to quantify their relative value to their company. Comprehensive data regarding such fees…
The title of an article in the Atlantic, Vol. 303, June 2009 at 54, provocatively asks, “Do CEO’s matter?” A groundbreaking study published 47 years ago found that “Industry effects,” such as the amount of available capital and the industry’s stability accounted for almost 30 percent of the variance between…