The difference between a business plan and a strategic plan. A session promoted at an upcoming conference about business plans for law departments suggests that a business plan aligns with the company’s goals for the year and describes the tactics for how it will meet those goals. A strategic plan…
Hear a document to help you proofread it. Text Speaker, software from New York’s Deskshare, states on its website a feature some in-house counsel might like: “Have the computer “read aloud” any text document. When you’re proofreading, hearing the words aloud makes it easy to catch common typing errors.” Nevr…
Software that helps to review promotional materials. I heard during a consulting project about software that reviews advertising, developed for Unilever’s law department in Australia. Apparently, business managers down under have some legal responsibility regarding contract review, unlike in the US, so they had more incentive to build a software…
With this post I have reached 210 embedded metaposts with URL links, each of which shows the number of references cited within them (See my post of Nov. 9, 2008: Part XX.). Billing rate increases (See my post of Dec. 5, 2008: rate increases by firms with 18 references.). Charge-back…
Discipline in law departments is milder than on British ships of the 18th century. Of the 1,556 sailors on 15 British naval vessels that sailed into the Pacific from 1765 to 1793, 21.5 percent were flogged. Michael Shermer, Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Time Books 2005) at…
Many of my posts recount a law department practice. I rarely summon any theoretical framework because I cannot perceive for law department management any persuasive theories. No one has unified the field of managing in-house lawyers with fundamental principles that do not contradict at some point. E=MC2 may someday also…
Many people think of evolution as a process of nature that leads to the improvement of a species. In a Darwinian struggle to reproduce, a “better” species comes about over time. Analogously, observers of legal departments may believe that over the past two decades, law department management has “evolved” to…
According to its website, “Global Leaders in Law is a forum, which has been established by a group of respected international GCs and former GCs united in the belief that as a group we can effect significant change in the perception of General Counsel as Global Leaders. Deepak Malhotra, the…
Offers of judgment under FRCP 68. Warning: I stopped practicing law years ago, so take the following comment as a lay understanding. If a party offers to pay an amount to the other side in settlement, and the other side refuses, then if the eventual award comes in at less…
PDQ learn these (See my post of Nov. 27, 2005: acronyms, jargon and corp-speak.): EMEA (See my post of Nov. 13, 2007: Europe, Middle East and Africa) CAGR (See my post of Nov. 26, 2006: compound annual growth rate.) FAQ – frequently asked questions FIHA (See my post of Dec.…