At the Corporate Legal Times 2003 Super Conference, June 12-13, 2003, Craig Glidden, the General Counsel of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPCC), displayed a fascinating slide. The left, vertical axis shows low value-added services up to high value-added services. The bottom axis moves from “specialty work” on the left over…
Something puzzles me about the prevailing view on legal specialists. People often characterize in-house counsel has generalists, dabbling in lots of legal issues, and private-practice lawyers as specialists, skilled in a niche area. The first part may somewhat hold true for the lawyer in-house who is alone or in a…
Protiviti obtained survey responses from 150 “CEOs, CFOs and other senior-level executives from among the top 2,000 companies.” As reported in the Wall St. J., June 5, 2007 in a supplement on risk, those respondents ranked the “top ten risks to organizations.” Most were business concerns: competition, customer satisfaction, IT…
Of late, many general counsel have had their mug shots taken, which is undesirable notoriety for a law department. Many more law departments, however, garner favorable publicity from a variety of activities. Here are some examples (See my posts of Sept. 21, 2005 on publicity that benefits vendors; Aug. 21,…
A late-blooming flower, honors and awards to law departments have recently sprung up everywhere. Law departments can seek recognition in a growing number of competitions. Evidently, many law departments strive for these recognitions. InsideCounsel magazine hosts its ten-innovative-law-department awards. Corporate Counsel produces an annual best law department issue. The Minority…
A US government agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, requires from employers documents that prove their employees’ eligibility to work in the US. Thousands of companies have been caught employing unauthorized workers, according to InsideCounsel, June 2007 at 40, and the penalties can reach millions of dollars. As part of the…
In 2005, a company bought Clayton Holdings, a company that trades and manages loans, and promptly merged it with another firm in the same line of business, thereby creating a $200 million combination. At the time, Clayton used a Chicago firm as its outside counsel and had one internal lawyer.…
In the Mich. B.J., Jan. 2007 at 35, Susan Diehl, the general counsel of Holcim (US) Inc., one of the country’s largest cement manufacturers, contributed an article entitled “How to run your in-house legal department like a profit center.” In it she outlines a three-step program that starts with four…
Under the promising headline in Inside Counsel, April 2007, “How do you demonstrate that your legal function adds value?,” Luke Baer, general counsel of Robert Bosch Corp., purports to offer four ideas, except that three of them do not apply. More precisely, three activities may deliver value but they do…
Hildebrandt Headlines, April 6, 2007: “Australian investor and workers’ rights firm Slater & Gordon will become the first law firm in the world to open its ownership to the public. According to a prospectus issued April 2, the offer for 35 million shares at about A$1 each will open on…