A good example of a complex law department is Raytheon. Its general counsel, Jay Stephens, spoke at a Director’s Roundtable, as reported in a special supplement to the Nat’l Law J., Feb. 2007 at 3, 12. First, it is not Raytheon’s “law department” but the Office of General Counsel. With…
HSBC, the globe-straddling financial powerhouse, has some 650 lawyers worldwide. According to a profile of Richard Bennett, HSBC’s general counsel, in Legal Week, Vol. 9, Mar 1, 2007 at 11, in half the 82 countries where HSBC has branches there is a domestic legal department. The senior lawyer of each…
Although I generally favor law departments that assign a lead lawyer for each significant business unit (sometimes called a single point of contact), such an alignment is not without problems (See my posts of Oct. 14, 2006 on SPOCs – single points of contact; and March 23, 2006 on SPOCs…
The general counsel of EMC Corp., Paul Dacier, interviewed for InsideCounsel, Feb. 2007 at 69, responded to a question regarding why the corporate secretary of EMC is an outside lawyer. Dacier explain that “we wanted someone that could give the board a different perspective.” The function was structured that way…
The Bus. Lawyer, Vol. 62, Nov. 2006 at 1, contains a 36 page article entitled “The Tensions, Stresses, and Professional Responsibilities of the Lawyer for the Corporation,” by E. Norman Veasey and Christine T. Di Guglielmo. It describes eight different roles of general counsel and heavily footnotes previous articles that…
Forgive the bad pun, but there is a new meaning to “IP replacement”: “Historically, the general counsel has handled IP, but that’s an antiquated model,” says an IP lawyer quoted in IP Law&Bus., Jan. 2007 at 16. The arrival of the IP “czars” – at companies such as Hewlett-Packard (Damon…
The whole domain of this handful of responsibilities remains very much in flux. An in Corp. Secretary, Jan. 2006 at 12, provides data from a large-scale survey and some thoughtful commentary on the turbulent scene. For example, at Edwards Life Sciences (Irvine, CA) the company’s general counsel also holds the…
A recent large-scale survey discovered that 39 percent of the respondent companies have split the rules of general counsel and corporate secretary. The other 59 percent (2% did not answer), reported that the same person holds both positions. For instance, the General Counsel of Toro Company, Lawrence McIntyre, holds both…
Corp. Secretary, Jan. 2006 at 12 reports on survey data from nearly 400 corporate secretaries, general counsel and other governance professionals, many of whom belong to the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals (until recently the American Society of Corporate Secretaries). Of the respondents, 16 percent said that the…
Cummins, a $9.9 billion manufacturer of engines, has 21 in-house lawyers as well as 9 paralegals and administrative personnel located in five countries. As well, the internal legal group collaborates very closely with Foley & Lardner. According to Counsel to Counsel, Jan. 2007 at 4-6, Foley & Lardner handles Cummins’…