This blog uses the word “negotiate” frequently, because it is a skill in-house lawyers commonly called on to exercise (See my post of Sept. 25, 2006: should rarely be the role of lawyers to negotiate most contracts.). Negotiation skills show up mostly with law firms, sometimes with vendors, and occasionally…
A study by Spencer Stuart in 2007 of the SAP 500 found that five percent of Boards of Directors had a standing committee for “legal/compliance.” Of those committees, 92 percent were composed entirely of independent directors. The research data can be found from the Spencer Stuart 2007 board index. In…
Hysteresis, lasting effects on law departments from the economic crash. The Economist, Vol. 393, Oct. 3, 2009 at 13, explains ”hysteresis,” a term taken from physics and adopted by economists to describe how unemployment may suffer lasting effects from drops in demand. Perhaps lawyers, in turn, should adopt the term…
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of Sept. 13, 2009: Part XXXIX), each tethered to the number of its back references. ACC Value Challenge (See my post of Sept. 14, 2009: Value Challenge with 7 references.). Creativity II (See my post of Sept. 26, 2009: creativity with 13 references…
“Longer tenure provides a better understanding of organizational policies and procedures and a reluctance to change past manners of operating.” (emphasis added). This quote from the Admin. Sciences Quarterly, June 1997 at 219, led me to wonder whether management initiatives drop in frequency as of general counsel settle into the…
Analysis of writing style on this blog. The most recent 17 pages of posts on this blog amounted to 7,686 words in 332 sentences. Passives were used – sorry, I wrote passive constructions in five percent of the sentences. The Flesch Reading Ease was 46.1 while the Flesch-Kincaide Grade Level…
For headcount calculations, sometimes a “lawyer” isn’t a “lawyer.” Discussing a consolidated legal department, a sidebar in Mark Prebble, Managing In-House Legal Services: Providing High Value Support for Your Organisation (Thorogood 2009) at 41, mentioned how hard it was to ascertain what internal legal resources were already in place across…
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of Aug. 27, 2009: Part XXXVIII), each followed with the number of its back references. Billing hyperpost (See my post of Jan. 2, 2009: 8 metaposts.). Contracts(See my post of Sept. 2, 2009: contracts with 48 references and 1 metapost.). Corporate Secretary software…
Here are the ten best from July. For each, the bracketed text after the header gives a brief description of the post; click on the post title to read it in its entirety. If you would like all the posts at once, email me rees@reesmorrison.com and I will be return…
Corporate credit unions as a cost of lawyers. I had never thought of it, but if a company supports a credit union, its in-house attorneys can benefit. Thus, it is yet another cost that is unlikely to be allocated to the legal department and therefore included in the fully-loaded cost…