If you graduate law school at 25, let’s say, and work five years in a law firm, then join a legal department, you might become a general counsel at 40. Consider a real person who easily bested that pace. Thomas Sabatino joined his first legal department (Baxter) when he was…
Those who report to a general counsel in large law departments differ from each other on such demographic characteristics as age, gender, race, religion, department tenure, education, and work background. “A team’s demographic heterogeneity, assessed using a variety of indexes, has been found to be negatively related to level of…
General counsel usually say things like “My lawyers tell me what they think. We have candid and open conversations in private and during staff meetings.” Maybe. I have always felt that subordinates do not point out that the top lawyer has no clothes, or that the firm favored by the…
talent mgt., May 2010 at 44, describes how GlaxoSmithKline tested a novel approach to assessing job candidates. They piloted a method that used a Web-based tool to analyze references before the decisive interviews of new hires, including lawyers. Once the top three to five candidates were identified they were asked…
“No matter how we might deny it, relationship issues are the most difficult problems we face in business.” The quote comes from Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired (Penguin 2009) at 49. I tend to think of the challenges of managing a group of in-house lawyers and staff as intellectual problems:…
A recent book about neuroscience and management makes the point that the common practice in business is to focus on managing the behavior of workers. Not good. To focus on the values and understanding of workers, says the author, is much more efficacious. Charles S. Jacobs, Management Rewired (Penguin 2009)…
When we consider data on those lawyers promoted to head the legal team – chief legal officer, head of legal, general counsel, call it what you will – a facile distinction divides them into internal promotions and external hires. But a more nuanced understanding recognizes internal promotions of lawyers who…
“Four out of five times, boards choose insider candidates when selecting a CEO. Insiders tend to perform better and last longer.” The quote comes from strategy + bus., Summer 2010 at 80. Booz & Company analyzed successions of CEOs at the world’s 2,500 largest publicly traded companies. They then studied…
Based on the responses of 348 in-house counsel (one-third of which are general counsel and 51 percent come from public companies), InsideCounsel, March 2010 at 47, discloses nine advantages of working as in-house counsel, plus rankings. “Work-life balance” led with 32.4 percent of the respondents choosing it, followed by “Exposure…
When employers across different companies use comparable surveys of employee engagement, you would think that some drivers of engagement would surface as more common and compelling. Not true. According to talent mgt., March 2010 at 42, “the drivers of employee engagement across different organizations are consistently more different than they…