In-house attorneys learn and gain proficiency when they handle real matters start to finish. Here is how the point is put in Practical Law, Dec. 2010/Jan. 2011 at 86: “the best way to develop in-house lawyers is to ensure they are exposed to a wide variety of experience and many…
Thanks to Christian Liipfert for this strong warning in favor of good training, good supervision, good information governance, and good ethical compliance. “In late 2010, Lauren Stevens, formerly an Associate General Counsel with GlaxoSmithKline, was indicted in Federal Court in connection with correspondence she had written to the Food &…
Having just written about Salary.com’s data online (See my post of Jan. 13, 2011: base salary for Associate General Counsel at $199,361.). I poked around on the Robert Half Salary Calculator. To try to get a comparable figure, I selected my Princeton zipcode – probably a relatively high cost area…
Along with the theme of learn by doing, a recent conference session on professional development stressed personal accountability: you know what you need and you have to push to satisfy your needs (See my post of July 22, 2009: professional development must be the personal responsibility of each in-house attorney.).…
Microsoft’s Department of Legal and Corporate Affairs uses an online tool to let its hundreds of members give feedback on their manager and their manager’s manager. A manager two levels above is referred to as a “skip-level manager.” Only large law departments could even contemplate such depth, but it is…
These suggestions come from the website of Robert Half International (See my post of May 22, 2009: hiring interviews for lawyers with 6 references.). If and when you ever get a chance to hire an attorney again, these questions should help. “Here are 10 to consider the next time you…
The website of MySalary.com presents compensation data for in-house lawyers in the United States. For example, it states that $199,361 is the median base salary for Associate General Counsel. The bell curve chart on the same webpage shows that the first decile of AGCs made $129,257 as a base salary;…
I read online that Morgan Stanley’s chief legal officer was to report to the company’s chief operating officer. The writer contrasted the situation with Thomas Russo who insisted on reporting to the CEO when he took the top legal role at AIG. Then the writer noted that “it’s highly unlikely…
It is hard for this blogger to escape US-centrism, given my background and primarily domestic consulting history. Aside from whatever blinders I wear, I do believe that law departments outside the United States have the same management concerns, perspectives, tools, and measures. Much of the time, general counsel of every…
A study of Dutch law departments by Dutch law firm Houthoff Buruma found a steady increase by age cohort in the percentage of in-house lawyers who are women. Above age 51, only 15 percent are women; 30 percent – double the older decade – are women in the 40-50 year…