In a few companies, the corporate secretary function – support of the Board of Directors and its committees, corporate housekeeping for subsidiaries, sometimes shareholder relations – stands on its own, not as part of the law department or a report to the chief legal officer. I do not think that…
LANXESS, a $2 billion spin off from Bayer Chemicals Corp., has four general commercial lawyers and three IP attorneys. The General Counsel, Marcy Tenaglia, has set up the law department of the specialty chemicals business in an unusual teaming structure. The arrangement divides the 15 business units and 8 service…
A piece from the UK, in Legal Week, Vol. 8, June 8, 2006, discusses the logic that combines legal oversight with government relations oversight. The article cites as examples the top lawyers in Europe of Microsoft (David Parker), McDonald’s (Julian Hilton-Johnson) and Dell (Richard Norman). The lawyers cited in the…
The 95 lawyers of Qualcomm consist of about 30 who “work in a half-dozen teams aligned with Qualcomm’s business units,” as described in Nat. L.J., July 17, 2006 at 8. For “many of those teams” the top lawyer reports to the head of the business unit. The other two thirds…
Political, social and economic forces gradually but powerfully transform departments. Unlike the decisions of a general counsel or CEO, however, these three tectonic plates shift without being recognized in law departments’ strategic thinking. Here is a glimpse of how the three forces might have effect. Political. A new administration alters…
Naturally, the number of lawyers in a law department who report directly to the general counsel depends greatly on the total number of lawyers. That said, of the approximately 100 lawyers in Honeywell’s law department, 15 report directly to Peter Kreindler, the company’s general counsel. This soupcon on structure, from…
When a law department has a matrix structure of functional generalists and legal specialists, checks and balances occur. There is an inherent tension which can be healthy for the law department (See my posts of Sept. 10, 2005 on specialist attorneys in large law departments.). The specialists feel that the…
The 25-lawyer legal and compliance department of Intuit transformed when the new general counsel, Laura Fennel, shifted its lawyers from supporting individual product lines to working in one of four practice groups. The practice groups cover commercial, global risk mitigation, intellectual property, and corporate and M&A, with each group led…
When Seth Jaffe arrived at Williams-Sonoma in 2002 as its general counsel, “the legal department was not involved in HR matters,” notes Counsel to Counsel, May 2006 at 27. The legal issues arising from the company’s 25,000 employees (a number which swells to 40,000 during the annual holiday season) “were…
Deep in a story about Computer Associates’ law department, Corp. Counsel, Vol. 13, April 2006 at 93, nestles this sad description of the 50-or-so-lawyer department’s one-time configuration: “The office itself was poorly organized, an impersonal, wide-open space with cubicles, where even the most privileged conversations were easily overheard. Lawyers had…