This blog footnoted in a treatise, in Blue Book citation form! Proudly I hail a citation to a post on this blog in a leading treatise, nothing less than Robert Haig, Ed., Successful Partnering Between Inside and Outside Counsel (Thomson Reuters/West 2009 Supp.), Vol. 1, Chapter 7 at §7.2. Paul…
Laura Empson, ed., Managing the Modern Law Firm: New Challenges New Perspectives (Oxford Univ. Press 2007), will mostly interest managing partners of law firms. That said, three chapters speak to concerns of general counsel, one on diversity, a fascinating chapter on law firm pricing, and a theoretical chapter on organizational…
Independent counsel to a Board of Directors. Even when a company has a legal department, Board members sometimes retain outside counsel (See my post of July 25, 2005: costs of Boards retaining independent counsel; Sept. 13, 2005: Carey International; Sept. 27, 2005 #3: Arizona Electric Power Boards retain independent counsel;…
I poked around on a site operated by the Library of Congress that has , compiled 1.2 million pages of American newspapers published between 1880 and 1922. Naturally, I searched the terms “legal department” and “law department.” “Legal department” returned 2,242 hits. Here is the earliest, from the New York…
Environmental nudges on e-mails. I like this message at the bottom of emails (See my post of Dec. 26, 2008 #4:: huge, wasteful disclaimer in the footer of every e-mail from a company.). “Please consider the environment before printing this email or attachments, and print double-sided in draft mode when…
Exelon has an internal 1,750 billable-hour requirement. Corp. Counsel, June 2009 at 72, mentions this, which bolsters my point that the 1,850 hour “standard” is too high. To put the difference in context, consider a five-lawyer department where inside spend is $400,000 per lawyer. At 1,850 chargeable hours they cost…
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of July 13, 2009: Part XXXV), each garnished with the number of its back references, for your perusal. Benchmarks not otherwise covered (See my post of July 15, 2009: benchmarks with specific metrics not otherwise covered with 46 references.). Committees in legal departments…
“America’s lawsuit system is already the world’s most expensive, costing more than $3,300 for every family of four,” announces Trial Lawyer Earmarks. The site adds that “less than 50 cents of every dollar actually [goes] to the victims.” Roughly speaking, if there are 300 million Americans, that means 75 million…
Litigation up, or perhaps down, during a recession. “During an economic recession and certainly during this one, litigation revenues can be expected to increase as a percentage of the firm’s total revenues” (See my post of June 28, 2009: spending on litigation ranked dead last in terms of likely to…
Ten more embedded metaposts (See my post of June 19, 2009: Part XXXIV), each embellished with the number of its back references. Evolution, evolve (See my post of June 25, 2008: evolution with 8 references.). General Electric (See my post of July 7, 2009: GE with 35 references.). Health (See…