Every consulting project I hear, “We want to be the trusted advisor of our clients, a consigliore.” Those who bandy the term about don’t know its illegal roots. The most common association of the Italian term is with gangsters, Mafiosa, Cosa Nostra racketeers. Discomfiting, isn’t it, that the Knoxville Bar…
Blogs have the privilege of recording even the most idiosyncratic items. From the Columbia Law School Report (Summer 2005 at 33): “Edith I. Spivack ’32 has retired after 70 years with the New York City Law Department, where she was hired in 1934 as assistant corporation counsel under [Mayor] LaGuardia.…
True or false? “For large US companies and their general counsel, minimizing the risk of reputational damage is the biggest task confronting them today.” Magesterial words from the Financial Times (April 7, 2005 at 8), yet a thunderingly broad, and scary, assertion. Everything a company does either polishes or scratches…
The British firm CMS Cameron McKenna published this year the first ever law firm “human capital” report. As reported in April by the Financial Times (at pg. 9), the report provides some data that law departments might also track and ponder. For example, secretaries took on average 6.6 sick days,…
Out of a total of 850 on the staff of Brad Smith, GC of Microsoft, 175 work on government relations (up from 75 in 2001). The Financial Times (April 2005 at 9), in its profile of Smith, added that more than half of the government relations staff are based overseas.…
According to a 2003 survey, web sites of law firms are one of the last places general counsel consult when looking for outside counsel. This factoid from the 2003 Legal Services Spending Assessment, conducted by The Corporate Counselor and The Center for Marketing Effectiveness tells nothing, because many general counsel…
Corporate Counsel (Aug. 19, 2005) mentioned that in the past year, 36 of the Fortune 250 general counsel “ceded” their post. That works out to 14 percent of them departing, which extrapolates to an average general-counsel tenure of seven years. The average tenure of a U.S. CEO may fairly closely…
A large financial services company I have assisted has an HR representative interview all lawyers who leave the department. The notes taken during those structured interviews can turn up some opportunities for improving how the department runs. People who leave may speak honestly, constructively, and objectively, especially if they are…
In May 2005, Eva Wisnik spoke to a the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA). One of her slides, missing any source reference, purports to show how lawyers score on the MBTI. Lawyers who are introverts – who get their intellectual energy alone, focus on fewer topics but…
Jeff Carr, the outspoken general counsel of FMC Technologies put forth ten rules for reducing the costs of litigation (Corp. Legal Times, Aug. 2005, at pg. 18). The rules struck me as savvy and iconoclastic. For example, recognize that litigation should never be a core competency and that it’s not…