This enormous multinational, with revenue of $104 billion, operates globally in consumer electronics, mobile communications, home appliances, chemicals and more, according to strat.+bus, Summer 2011 at 44. Even so, “the corporate core limits its voice to brand-building, R&D expenditures, high-level human resources decisions, and capital investments.” Not a word at…
To sort out a number of strands of an important issue – the value delivered by in-house counsel – I took the propositional approach. I offer nine propositions about that value, such as how to measure it, what it consists of, the role of clients, and other points. It is…
Could the compensation of general counsel, relative to their function peers such as the CFO, HR head, and CIO, give a clue to the relative value ascribed to law departments? In any specific company, not necessarily, because SVPs and EVPs arrived at different times, with different levels of experience, and…
Eastman Kodak makes hundreds of millions of dollars every year from its patent licenses. Its lucrative portfolio has more than 1,000 patents and in 2010 “it made an estimated $630 million from its licenses, according to Argus Research.” The quote comes from the NY Times, April 29, 2011 at B4,…
One point made by Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton Univ. 2010) at 54, concerns job tenure and productivity. From his careful study of equity research analysts who were top-ranked by Institutional Investor, he confirmed what others have found: “Empirical studies have…
During the past fortnight I have labored over an article on in-house value. The word value perplexes everyone who thinks about it and tries to articulate what it entails. I won’t pretend to breakthrough insights but here I can certainly be the Pied Piper to my posts on in-house value…
Since I will be speaking at Mitratech’s Interact Forum next month, I looked back over some earlier presentations. In one of them, Steve Harmon, Senior Director of Legal Services at Cisco Systems, spoke on a range of topics, including the law department’s ongoing efforts to spend the bulk of its…
It must be that legal work done in-house has steadily moved up the value curve much like the work done by outside counsel has elevated (See my post of March 11, 2011: huge productivity increases, plus quality.). By “value curve” I mean the importance of the work done for the…
I’m not trying to be silly or too clever. The heading of this post, borrowed from a phrase that has been applied to finance, conveys the proper notion that: in-house lawyers are more likely to be lubricants than propellants. They enable business to succeed, but they don’t drive the strategic…
A law department I recently read about boasted this strategy explicitly, which set me to wondering about its advisability. My conclusion: a bad idea. Extended very far this logic would push a general counsel to in-source as much as possible and therefore balloon the headcount. Some lawyers would not have…