Wandering around on GoogleScholar, I happened upon an application for a US patent, No. US 2003/0074354 A1, filed on Jan. 17, 2001 by Suzanne Hawkins (in General Electric’s law department) and Mary Lee. In addition to the 10-page application are 18 pages of diagrams, many of them of the GE…
Strictly speaking, pro bono service is intended to encompass a relatively narrow scope of activities. While community services is encouraged, true pro bono service as envisioned by rules of professional conduct is limited to legal services for persons of limited means or for organizations designed primarily to address the needs…
David Bilinsky, writing in Law Practice, Oct./Nov. 2008 at 51, draws on LexisNexis’s 2007Juris Law Firm Economic Survey. “Billed hours per lawyer in the top quartile firms averaged 1,582; in the fourth quartile firms, the average was only 1,314 hours.” These figures, even if they came from firms that haven’t…
An advertisement by Johnson Controls offers ten ways we can all contribute to environmental sustainability. Three of the steps are available to all law departments. (1) In addition to printing on both sides for drafts, use the “draft” setting. “In one test, a typical inkjet printed 12 pages per minute…
Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Pantheon Books 2008) at 203, urges managers to “focus on the ability to react to events rather than relying on the ability to predict them, on qualities like flexibility, confidence, courage, and perseverance.” Instead of pouring hours into crafting scenarios…
Blog posts are for reading, but read this one aloud and listen! Listening well is a skill, and clients and others want you to do so. Here are an earful of aids to better listening (See my post of April 13, 2007: listen, identify, and enhance; April 15, 2006: best…
Prof. Legal Mgt. Week Mag., 2008 at 62, proffers a number of ideas that all law departments could adopt to help the environment. The article urges every office to find out what they call its “carbon footprint.” A carbon footprint measures how much carbon dioxide some group produces in a…
According to IP Law & Bus., Vol. 6, Sept. 2008 at 42, one of the practices at 3M Co. is to have its patent lawyers “not only attend meetings of the management teams and operating committee, but even keep regular office hours in the business units’ labs.” Circuit riding means…
According to IP Law & Bus., Sept. 2008 at 42, an IP department should agree with executive management as to the ultimate purposes of the department. I have paraphrased the three basic objectives. Inside patent lawyers might focus on “freedom to operate,” which includes such steps as extensive patenting or…
A recent example of general counsel under the klieg lights was the joint appearance on Capital Hill of the general counsel of Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. Whether the general counsel takes on the role of spokesperson depends on such factors as the person’s comfort doing so, the availability of other…