Mark I. Sirkin, Ph.D., Hildebrandt International Since law departments recruit mostly from law firm associates, the more general counsel know about them the more successful recruiting and retention efforts will be. According to Hildebrandt International, Understanding Associates: New Perspectives on Associate Satisfaction and Morale (Somerset, NJ: 2007), associates divide into…
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest charitable organization in the world. Its legal department, according to Corp. Counsel, Vol. 14, Dec. 2007 at 103, has 12 lawyers. Ironically, for such an extraordinarily endowed organization, the annual budget for that department, which has assisted with the donation of…
A columnist in InsideCounsel, Dec. 2007 at 84, must be in a small law department. Michael Baroni, the general counsel for BSH Home Appliances, writes about the saving graces of humor, which is especially important in small legal departments. Why there? “[B]ecause it can offset the higher stress, longer hours…
Some of you in law departments wake up quickly, pile into work and tackle your tough problems before sip your Starbucks. Others of you, according to the Atlantic, Dec. 2007 at 28, rev up by the afternoon, push through past closing time, but can barely manage to open emails in…
If a company requires the posting of all position openings, shouldn’t the law department comply? “Absolutely,” says Paul Roy, the administrator of TimeWarnerCable’s law department. In his company, the legal department is required to let all employees of the company know about its openings. Posted positions are part of the…
Almost all law departments have a mixture of exempt and non-exempt employees. Lawyers and law department administrators are exempt because they have management responsibility; secretaries, records clerks, receptionists, and messengers are among those who traditionally are non-exempt. Among two groups of law department employees there can be some grey area…
As a broad generalization, one law department that has more experienced attorneys than another department will probably be more productive. One might say that young lawyers bring energy and new perspectives, but I would put my money on those longer in tooth who have developed experiential judgment and who have…
Here is a possible metric for in-house litigation managers. It combines of two measures that capture workload and complexity. The absolute number of cases overseen by a litigator would be one component; the other the total amount spent on outside counsel by a litigator. You would have to scale the…
If you know of a lawyer who has been seconded by a law firm to a client’s law department, would you share with me the level of lawyer, the time period, anything you can disclose about costs, and how well the arrangement worked? I will compile all responses, keeping all…
Roll your eyes at this. In 1873 the all-male Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Bradwell v. Illinois that women did not have the right to become lawyers: “The natural and proper delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life,” eight…