Valentine’s day deserved a heart-warming, feel-good hug of an item – but look what turned up. On the internet, “general counsel” and “love,” produced a heart-stopping 803,000 hits. Too much love. So I tried “general counsel” and “valentine,” which dropped the hits to 106,000. Still overcome by emotion, I narrowed…
Bonuses in law departments are not a sure thing. When recruiting lawyers, those who do so owe it to candidates to accurately describe the likelihood of the new lawyer receiving various bonus amounts. After all, sometimes bonuses dry up. This boom-or-bust uncertainty is not the only lash of bonuses. A…
In declining order, no less. What do you think? Doesn’t this provoke you to respond: write Rees! 1. Mismanage the people in the law department. 2. Not model the behavior they expect from their staff. 3. Allow clients to hire and direct law firms for significant work. 4. Believe that…
A consulting group, having reviewed a municipal Office of the Corporate Counsel, recommended that the OCC transform the existing evaluation system for attorneys and support staff into a performance management system with the following parameters: 1. based on a core-competency model; 2. aligned with the OCC’s strategic objectives; 3. incorporates…
In at least a half dozen ways, those lawyers who are a company’s only in-house counsel avoid many of the management challenges of larger departments. 1. Vestigial need for knowledge management processes, 2. Non-existent delegation and work assignment issues (See my post of Aug. 26, 2005 about delegation to paralegals.)…
I propose the term “cognitive lawyering” to cover such concerns as 1. neuroscience, 2. rationality, 3. psychometrics, 4. methods of learning, 5. knowledge management, 6. emotional intelligence, 7. decision-making, 8. memory, 9. creativity and everything else that has to do with enhancing and understanding lawyers’ logic, creativity, reasoning, and mental…
Research has shown that optimists often believe they have much more control over events than they actually do. “They tend to underestimate (often by orders of magnitude) the costs and effort needed to accomplish longer-term objectives.” (Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 30, Winter 2006 at 21, citing Daniel Kahneman and Martin Seligman)…
An article by Jean Greaves, Ph.D., author, consultant and promoter of emotional intelligence (EI), states the value of EQ boldly (Complete Lawyer, Vol. 1, No. 1 . EI involves four core skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The most important, self-awareness, depends on your recognizing what is happening…
An Assistant General Counsel with Cox Communications, speaking at ACC’s 2004 Annual Meeting (Course 309), said that they have put in place a method that encourages people in the law department to get to know each other better. Called the “Buddy System,” it pairs people for six-month periods. During that…
An Assistant General Counsel with Cox Communications, speaking at ACC’s 2004 Annual Meeting (Course 309), explained a personnel tool they use in her law department. It asks people to rate themselves from 1 to 7 on 36 questions of a “Values Assessment Tool.” All the questions begin with, “As a…