In connection with their work as lawyers, of the 235 US general counsel who responded to a recent survey 57 percent “said they would seek personal advice from outside legal counsel, and 48% from outside non-legal advisors.” This startling possibility from a survey jointly conducted by Corporate Board Magazine and…
What if a law department awarded bonuses every time a patent issued speedily, a case over a certain value were resolved, an employment-discrimination charge dismissed without a factual inquiry? Good results such as those involve practice area benchmarks and risks of gaming by lawyers, but it is direct line of…
This blog has referred frequently to a variety of psychometric instruments (See my posts of April 18, 2005 and Aug. 21, 2005 on Meyers-Briggs; April 9, 2005 on Hartman-Kinsel; Sept. 22, 2006 #3 on Birkman; Jan. 1, 2006 on various instruments; Oct. 19, 2005 #1 on five others; and Oct.…
New CEOs often want to shape their own team of senior executives, so the general counsel may also be a casualty of change (See my post of May 14, 2005 on the vulnerable period after a new CEO arrives; Sept. 13, 2005 on survival after a merger.). The typical tenure…
The law department of Rouse Company, which had 17 lawyers in 2004, didn’t do mid-year reviews. At annual reviews “the most important rule is that there can be no surprises on someone’s review. If you’ve got an employee whose attorneys are unhappy with the work all year but have not…
One of the bromides of management is to “hire people smarter than you.” This ambition may be easier than it seems if, as one researcher has claimed, IQ scores are generally rising. According to a review of James R. Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, in the Am.…
Data from the most recent Hildebrandt benchmarking survey (HILDS) shows how consequential long-term incentives are to senior lawyers in law departments. As a percentage of total compensation (salary, cash bonus and value of long-term incentives), the amounts range from 51 percent for chief legal officer’s, 45 percent for general counsel,…
At Cox Communications, in-house counsel in managerial roles can take part in the company’s formal mentoring program. If they do participate in the year-long program, they are never matched with other lawyers. Instead they are mentored by high-level leaders from elsewhere in the corporation. According to the article about this…
InsideCounsel, July 2007 at 66, mentions that the law department of Cajun Operating Co., which owns Church’s Chicken, has three lawyers and four paralegals. One of those paralegals used to spend all of his time doing trademark work. The general counsel of Cajun, Kenneth Cutshaw, outsourced some of that trademark…
For your next retreat, give some thought to inviting the general counsel from a leading company within your industry to present to your law department. He or she need not prepare PowerPoint slides but could offer experiences and observations about either legal issues that face that company’s law department or…