In 2003, the law department of Reuters, slashed by cost cutting, made redundant 20 percent of the legal staff. Legal Week, Nov. 3, 2005, at 78 The general counsel, Rosemary Martin, “took creative steps to keep up morale and stem any further exits.” For example, she increased secondments to other…
For those working in a law department, “engagement” has a different nuance than satisfaction and morale. As a recent article explains, engagement involves deeper attachments, or the lack of them, than does satisfaction. The level of engagement in your department makes a big difference in its effectiveness. For other thoughts…
The number of graduates from US law schools has stayed almost flat for years (about 38,000 new JDs); worse, LSAT scores of law school students – thus, presumably, academic intelligence – have declined (See my post of July 31, 2005 on emotional intelligence.). During those same years, the premier law…
Several months ago, I criticized the use of forced ranking in law departments (See my post of May 4, 2005.), but a review of Dick Grote, Forced Ranking (Harvard Bus. Press 2005) presented arguments in favor of that technique. A typical system might classify the top 20 percent of all…
If general counsel were to articulate their management philosophies, I suspect many would order up military metaphors. “I’ve got the troops, having succeeded in the war for talent. My chain of command will hold the line and we can charge into battle if we marshal our resources to attack and…
A fascinating article in Legal Week, Vol. 7, Oct. 27, 2005 at 82 explained how legislation in South Africa has driven and will drive diversity at both firms and departments. For example, financial services institutions must procure 50 percent of their services from ‘black-owned,’ ‘black-controlled’ and ‘black-influenced’ companies by 2008.…
An article (Legal Week, Vol. 7, Oct. 27, 2005 at 22) that mostly emphasized emotional intelligence (Ei) explained the differences between these four attributes. “Competence is about what I can do (skills), IQ is about what I could do (cognitive potential), personality is about how I do it (style), and…
Based on compensation surveys and an analysis of titles in my book, Law Department Benchmarks: Myths, Metrics and Management, the title, Associate General Counsel, bespeaks more authority than the title, Assistant General Counsel. Two other points about titles deserve mention. I heard from a General Counsel for three law departments…
Most HR departments assign a person to support the law department. That person may also support other functional areas, such as finance and information technology. For a law department, the HR rep typically carries out a number of tasks. They provide comparative compensation data (See my posts on March 26,…
Most general counsel would nod agreement with David Krasnostein, the General Counsel of Australia’s National Australia Bank. His department of more than 120 lawyers looks to recruit third and fourth year associates from private law firms. “They’ve already been very well trained by the firms and you don’t have to…