“Heck, every time we assign someone to their work longer term, they hire them out of the firm to work in the department, usually just at the point when they begin to actually contribute to the firm’s overall profitability.” This quote, presumably from a law firm managing partner, comes from…
Nearly all law departments are staffed so leanly that little time exists for their busy lawyers to train backups. Lawyers fill specific roles, their plates are full, and there is not time to cross train someone just in case (See my post of June 24, 2007: intractable management problem of…
Turnover diminishes a department’s current capability, bench strength, and succession planning. When a good performer leaves, the loss blasts a hole in institutional knowledge, expertise and collegiality (See my post of May 14, 2005: turnover losses; June 15, 2005: costs to law departments of turnover; and May 5, 2008: turnover…
“Control is a central theme in organization theory, economics, and business history,” according to Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Bus. School Press 2006) at 68. One of the most influential postmodern philosophers, Michel Foucault, saw power animating…
To some observers, motivation has four commonly measured workplace indicators: engagement, satisfaction, commitment, and intention to quit. These came from a recent issue of Talent Management and all apply to some degree to law departments. “Engagement represents the energy, effort, and initiative employees bring to their jobs” (See my post…
The National Association of Women Lawyers will host the Fourth Annual General Counsel Institute in early November. The topics to be discussed include several on law department management. NAWL is not alone in its attention to women who practice law in corporate settings. Other groups for in-house women lawyers include…
General counsel – indeed all managers, one hopes – want capable, ambitious people to report to them and a measure of competitiveness among them. Even so, they disapprove if competitive drives by those reports threaten the manager’s position (See my post of Jan. 18, 2007: general counsel fear usurpation; and…
A thoughtful book, Susan Neiman’s Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grownup Idealists (Harcourt 2008), argues that the values of the Enlightenment thinkers – Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Kant and others in roughly the 18th century – still stand us in good stead. She condenses them into the importance of happiness and…
A vital goal for most law-department retreats is to have the lawyers get to know each other better. Familiarity helps build trust and teamwork. One technique to help accomplish that goal, as well as to start the retreat off in an upbeat way, is to begin with an enjoyable ice-breaker.…
If you believe that legal staff make all the difference in the effectiveness of a law department, you may be interested in recent research into what handicaps effective development of people. Seven obstacles from The McKinsey Quarterly, 2008 No. 1 at 51, and quoted below are based on interviews of…