The profiles of general counsel are pretty dry as far as law department management juiciness. Still, squeezing a recent one about Maryanne Lavan, the lawyer leading Lockheed Martin’s 136 worldwide attorneys, you see a useful drip. She spent six years at a law firm, then six years at Lockheed as…
An interview of Amy Schulman, Pfizer’s top lawyer, offers insights into her view of her role, power, and risks. Found in the NY Times, Dec. 11, 2011 at BU2, her comments on leadership are perceptive. One of them all general counsel should take to heart. Schulman, in her exalted position…
Bill Mordan’s latest column for the ACC Docket, Nov. 2011 at 108, talks about a variation on Lord Acton’s observation that “power corrupts.” Mordan explains that socially adept people tend to climb the career ladder well, but once they are in charge, some of them suddenly change, and for the…
A brutal piece in Fortune, Dec. 12, 2011 at 144, about the fall from grace of Bank of New York’s recently ousted CEO, Robert Kelly, gives a little insight into the sharp knives that surround big-time GCs. When Jane Sherburne took the top legal job in May 2010, “the board…
SiteMeter brought to my attention an oddity about this blog. Far and away, the most read post by numbers of visits was one that I published on March 22, 2006. This blockbuster has attracted 134 visits, dwarfing the next most frequently visited post that had only 79 visits. I believe…
In-house lawyers want respect and they want to be dealt with by their colleagues as a peer. If they are mostly Vice Presidents but their business colleagues are dotted with Senior Vice Presidents and Executive Vice Presidents, the perceived demeanment at best is an irritation but at worst precludes them…
General counsel would do well to ponder two contrarian points made recently about leadership. A commentary on the latest book by Jim Collins, Great by Choice, in the Economist, Nov. 26, 2011 at 80, refers to two common beliefs that he challenges. Collins does not believe that “turbulent times call…
This blog has described what psychologists call the halo effect (See my post of April 13, 2007: “the tendency to make specific inferences on the basis of a general impression.”). Stylish clothes improve the assessments we make of the wearer’s unrelated attributes. Good looking people get the benefit of being…
The new general counsel for the North American operations of the Rilin Group, a China-based sea transportation and wind-power company, had previously been a court of claims judge in New York State. Robert Holdman resigned because he could not afford to remain in the $135,700 a year judicial position. This…
If you are the head employment lawyer for EMEA and are promoted to global employment lawyer, certainly your scale of responsibility expands. You have more people reporting to you, a larger budget, more locations to visit, additional laws and regulations to consider, but you are essentially doing the same things…