In his description of the legal reporting lines at General Electric, Ben Heineman writes that inside lawyers “have a direct line to [their] business leader and a strong dotted line to [the general counsel] me,” Corp. Counsel, Vol. 13, April 2006 at 87. It is “strong dotted” because “both the…
A careful lawyer carefully locates participial phrases, because its position can change sentence rhythm, shift emphasis, create sentence variety, and link to the next sentence. (1) Wanting to delay the closing past its fiscal year end, Big Company cancelled two meetings and left behind its key decision maker from the…
The latest Hildebrandt Law Department Survey shows that the median number of lawyers per secretary was four. Four?! Only a few years ago that ratio was closer to two. What’s going on? Three reasons, particularly, account for the shift. The storm surge of e-mail and Blackberry messages has scaled back…
In February 2003, Legal Director and Baker & McKenzie questioned more than 100 heads of legal and general counsel at leading multinational companies with operations in Europe. The summary of findings has a number of intriguing points on reporting lines (See my post of April 12, 2006, for their findings…
Accenture’s legal department, with 370 members around the world, has two practices, both of which are unusual, that help it maintain cohesiveness. Its Leadership Council, where 50 senior lawyers meet at least monthly in web-based conferences, stands out. Going beyond the direct reports to the general counsel, that group also…
James Diggs, the general counsel of PPG Industries, spoke to a reporter about the recent restructuring of his 37-lawyer department, GC Mid-Atlantic, March 2006 at 24. In that retelling, we can pick out three important points about law department structure. For the first point, Diggs explains that a new CEO…
“We have silos in this law department!” I hear that complaint during most of my projects, and it is always pejorative. “The lawyers supporting the widget group don’t know, let alone help, the lawyers supporting the framzjigy group.” Turf wars, balkanization, empires, fiefdoms, hoarded information – never a kind word.…
The web site of Network Frontiers summarizes an article in CPM Global Assurance magazine that discusses systems continuity efforts by an information technology function. The article uses the term “emergency management professions,” and includes within them “business continuity, security, disaster recovery, crisis management etc. and you could easily argue that…
For law departments with more than, say, 15 lawyers, the median ratio is three lawyers for every paralegal. What that median conceals, however, are wide disparities among different practice areas. My consulting experience suggests that the highest ratios of lawyers per paralegal are in tax and M&A. Somewhat more paralegals…
John Deere’s law department supports dual development tracks, according to “Leading Practices in Job Titles for In-House Lawyers: What Companies are Doing” (Assoc. Corp. Counsel, Aug. 2005 at 14). It’s logical, isn’t it, that lawyers who manage other lawyers will tend to be more generalists, while those lawyers who concentrate…