An optimally efficient law department – given an amount of resources such as lawyers, computers, and structural components – produces for its company maximum output. An optimally effective department delivers maximum value. Economic jargon only? No, the distinction highlights fundamental differences between law department management perspectives and objectives. So-called “output…
A high-risk, high reward tool for law departments is the so-called Johari window. The Johari window has four quadrants (panes): personal characteristics known by the person or not known by them are in two panes matched against those characteristic known by others (blind spots) and not known by others (hidden…
A full-scale 360º evaluation program stumbles badly if the law department is small. The department simply does not have enough reports to provide anonymity and representativeness, by which I mean a sufficiently sizeable sampling of opinions about someone above. What I have done in two different retreats, however, has been…
A perspicacious article in the Harvard Business Review, written by David Nadler of Mercer Delta Consulting (Sept. 2005 at 69), explored the tensions of being the trusted advisor of CEOs. It listed some of the distinctions that make the CEO’s job like no one else’s in a company. Let me…
The Project for Attorney Retention (PAR), an initiative of the Program of Worklife Law at American University’s Washington College of Law published a lengthy report in December 2003 (10 Wm. & Mary J. of Women & L. 367 (Spring 2004). The report addressed telecommuting in legal departments (pg. 370). “A…
A previous post wrote about competency maps used by Altria’s Asian law department (CounseltoCounsel, May 2005 at pg. 11). The group developed a skills and competency profile (sometimes called a “competency map”) for each lawyer position. The profile captured the needed skills in four categories and ranked the competency level…
I am serious about this question, even after 18 years of doing nothing but trying to understand how to improve law departments. And Professor Jay Forrester, the world-famous emeritus professor at MIT who has studied complex systems for 40 years, offers an explanation why. “most social organizations … represent a…
A piece in the National Law Journal (Sept. 5, 2005 at pg. 11) cited remarks by the GC of Walmart, Thomas Mars. Mars said that 82 of the relationship partners at the company’s top 100 firms are white men. Doesn’t that mean that 18 percent of the retailer’s top 100…
Along with liberation from tracking time, lawyers who move from firm to department revel in their freedom from having to sell work. Work comes to the inbox, often over-spilling it. The irony is that an in-house lawyer, having only one cast of client characters, is locked into their clients’ foibles,…
A law department in the U.K. just announced it hired a lawyer who had been a secondee from a major law firm (Legal Week, Sept.15, 2005). It is probable that some law firms, before sending their best and brightest to a client as a secondee, ask the client to agree…