In his thoughtful retrospective, Joe Ryan, the long-time General Counsel of Marriott Corporation, proffers sage advice. In Acc Docket, Vol. 24, Nov./Dec. 2007 at 98, Ryan puts forward the view that a general counsel is stronger whose background is transactional rather than litigation. That makes sense to me, because litigation…
Take note of one more practice of the law department of Cummins, a $9.9 billion manufacturer of engines. According to Counsel to Counsel, Jan. 2007 at 4-6, each year the 21-lawyer department holds a conference for all of its lawyers, many of which are based in four countries other than…
Agency theory, one of the most influential economic theories 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 65, “presumes that people at work seek self-interest with guile, deceit and cunning.” Moral hazard runs…
Quite a few positions in law departments end up being molded to the lawyer’s background, preferences, and styles (See my post of March 16, 2006 on A-positions more than A-players.). This makes sense because “It turns out that a surprisingly high percentage of jobs are idiosyncratic, created, designed and customized…
According to a recent piece in Agenda Week, Boards of Directors are intruding more and more on the selection of the company’s general counsel. According to one board member, “the board should never outright veto a candidate the CEO is considering because their role is to offer recommendations without dictating…
An item in MIT’s Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 48, Winter 2007 at 6, distinguishes between developmental coaching, where a supervisor addresses an individual’s knowledge or performance gaps, and executive coaching, which is more about peer guidance and addresses differences in behavior and managerial style. In either situation, “coaching is set…
In June 2006, George Stansfield, Senior Vice President and Group General Counsel of the £72 billion AXA Group, spoke at the 18th Annual General Counsel Conference (See my post of July 25, 2005 for more on AXA’s legal team.). In Stansfield’s slides on the challenges facing a global organization, one…
All companies have contracts; all have employees. All companies have real estate issues; all have some corporate activities like finance, subsidiary housekeeping, and securities. All companies have some level of litigation, so these five areas of law don’t account a priori for the wide differences across industries in median lawyers…
“Confident leaders are not afraid to surround themselves with the brightest people at their disposal, including potential rivals.” Hire people smarter than you, in short, is what Stefan Stern, Fin. Times, Oct. 3, 2006 at 8, could have added in his column on seven principles for a leader. A related…
Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management (Harvard Bus. School Press 2006) at 125-127 explains why bonus programs can cause dissatisfaction in law departments. The co-authors give three reasons, which reinforce each other: self-enhancement effects, under-funding, and social relations. The…