Very large legal departments find it difficult to create a one-department culture. With hundreds of lawyers and as many support staff, often scattered hither and yon, professional cohesion dissipates, let alone social cohesion. The notion that humans evolved in small groups and can’t effectively sustain relationships beyond a certain limit…
“Research has suggested that lawyers are by nature competitive and have a high degree of self worth. In other words, seeking help or supporting colleagues are not natural.” Thus saith Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 61. That Hobbesian view…
If effective management all comes down to people, why wouldn’t a legal department staffed only with Harvard Law Review editors not drive total legal spending as low as possible? They would think rings around other in-house groups in negotiations and strategy, they would extract the most from outside counsel –…
“Any technique of social control, however, involves human interests and the exercise of power over men. This means that any suggestion of a method for the solution of a social problem is shot through with normative implications.” Found in a book, Daniel B. Klein, ed., What Do Economists Contribute (NY…
Headhunters account for only a small portion of all the law positions filled for legal departments, the most senior ones at that (See my post of Sept. 16, 2008: search firms with 12 references,including estimates of 10-15% of positions.). For the bulk of attorney openings, a large number of choices…
A piece in the ACC Docket, Vol. 27, July/Aug. 2009 at 26, describes internship programs at the law departments of RSM McGladrey and Piper Jaffay. The lessons they have learned include, especially, that you have to plan for the internship, organize it well, and make sure there is “benefit to…
A report three or four years ago by the General Counsel Roundtable found that frustration by in-house attorneys regarding career advancement had not created difficulty for legal departments in attracting, motivating, and retaining attorneys. To the contrary, many legal departments were found to be suffering from the opposite problem –…
“More than 100 studies have demonstrated the correlation between employee engagement and business performance. … But only one in four employees, on average, is “engaged.” After that sad finding, strategy + business, Issue 56, Autumn 2009 at 49, continues with a description of the four factors that dominate the drivers…
A late-breaking study of the electronic document discovery (EDD) market, by George Socha and Tom Gelbman, paints a grim picture about the ability of general counsel to develop and retain managers of EDD. “Hiring at corporations also has been difficult. Estimates are that by now maybe20 to 30 companies have…
Two quite different definitions are possible for the term “dedicated IT support.” Most people define such a person as someone who reports up the corporate technology organization but who spends full time supporting the legal department. The information systems group has “dedicated” that person to support the law department (See…