Disadvantages when a company’s general counsel serves on some other company’s board have been covered here (See my post of May 11, 2011: conflicts, time, fees.). Those drawbacks notwithstanding, it is not uncommon to find general counsel who serve as a board member elsewhere. The advantages that come to mind…
Rotman Mag., Spring 2011 at 84, describes research by Haygreeva Rao, a Stanford professor of organizational behavior. Rao places much importance on the number of statements bosses make in meetings versus the number of questions they ask. “He argues that letting others speak and asking questions – real questions, not…
Many in-house lawyers are frequent travelers. They fly for client meetings, for huddles with outside counsel, for team gatherings and conferences, CLE sessions. The degradation to their health that results starts with weight gain and includes higher blood pressure, worse cholesterol, more stress, and poorer sleep patterns. All these maladies…
Our times revere expertise. Lawyers with deep experience in an area of law, such that they write articles, publish books, speak on panels, head committees, and lead task forces, have mastered their domain and achieved recognition. Whether or not met with external acknowledgement, experienced inside lawyers build up incredible knowledge…
In The Future of History (Yale 2011), John Lukacs traces the shift in historical scholarship over the past 250 years from aristocratic history – great men fighting great battles for great politics – to social history – a profoundly more democratic study of people of all walks and circumstances of…
When the current general counsel of Mercedes-Benz (Charles Shady) took the wheel two years ago, the legal department ranked 29th out of 30 in an in-house survey, with just 68 percent of the group expressing job satisfaction. In 2010, the law group was the highest-rated department for employee satisfaction in…
In an interview, Helen Gillcrist, the veteran administrator of the Liberty Mutual law department, was asked “If you were recruiting to replace yourself, what sort of background would look for in the candidates?” The surprising answer comes online on June 27, 2011, from Legal Strategy Rev (CPA Global). Gillcrist said…
Canadian Lawyer gathered salary data from 12 Canadian general counsel. The findings broke them into “director level” and “executive level.” The salary differential was large, as the median for the directors was $155,000 (Canadian dollars) versus $207,000 for the executives (30% higher). The sample is very small, but the point…
Paragon Legal, started by Mae Tai O’Malley around 2007, places former in-house lawyers – usually women – inside companies on a project basis. According to Fortune, July 4, 2011 at 77, Paragon “has more than 60 lawyers, 85% of whom are women with school-age kids.” They are billing at close…
Canadian Lawyer gathered salary data from 87 Canadian in-house counsel. I looked at each year out of law school and their ranges, meaning the absolute difference between the lowest salary and the highest salary. They averaged $76,000 but they showed no pattern with increasing years of experience. I would have…