A survey conducted by Incomes Data Services, reported in Legal Week, Vol. 10, Jan. 24, 2008 at 3, found that the average salary for UK in-house lawyers was £114,658 (roughly $200,000). That average figure increased 6.8% from the corresponding figure the year before. Two points. First, since compensation accounts for…
The law department of JPMorgan Chase and the US law firm, Kelley Drye & Warren sreid@kelleydrye.com, have launched a program to promote diversity. Law students from diverse backgrounds who are part of Kelley Drye’s summer associate program will have the opportunity to spend five weeks working at the law firm…
When you bring your lawyers together for an offsite, you need some fun things for them to do. At one gathering, all the attendees broke into small groups and assembled bikes. At the end of the day, children from the community came in and gratefully accepted the bikes as gifts.…
General counsel are most effective when they talk frequently and informally with their colleague lawyers (See my post of Sept. 25, 2006: open-door attitudes of general counsel.). To be continually closeted in meetings and barricaded behind closed doors is to be out of touch. Not only does morale suffer (See…
The other day the general counsel of a huge subsidiary bemoaned his department’s attrition rate of only about four percent per year. In this 400+-person group, he would actually like more people to turn over as he could then “refresh” the group (See my posts of June 24, 2007 on…
To earn more, general counsel need to supervise larger legal departments, according to a 2007 survey by Altman Weil. For general counsel in one-lawyer departments, the median cash compensation was $200,000, according to Law.com. The survey shows median pay climbed to $300,000 for two- to five-lawyer departments, $400,000 for six…
From New Nation News Jan. 14, 2008, comes this slice-of-life career progression that is highly unusual for US lawyers. In 1994 Karina Dashko entered Moscow State University to study law. She also worked with the State Duma to develop programs for disclosing corporate information and protecting minority shareholders, and helped…
A piece in Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2008, Vol. 301 at 24, adds to our understanding of the many ways that pure legal ability is not the only way we assess in-house lawyers The article explains recent research that shows that the more attractive your smile, the more money you make. The…
Craighton Goepple, now a senior lawyer with Starbucks, describes his experience as a secondee from Graham & James to the law department in Tokyo of ITOCHU. Starting in 1996, Goepple worked full time at ITOCHU for a year and a half. The article, in Bus. Law Today, Vol. 17, Jan./Feb.…
An idea new to me is discussed in MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 49, Winter 2008 at 69. The idea is to use a bulletin board system to collect comments from employees. Someone then analyzes those comments and draws conclusions about morale, engagement and what factors influence those. In other…